A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?


I'm selling a laptop on eBay,
Buyer is asking me what size the SSD is and we are getting argumentative
as I tell him there isn't one (i've taken the drives out see) and they
are saying there's one in the pics.

And there is. I've pulled the back off again and there's a little board
the size of my thumb screwed onto the mainboard.
That could have been a privacy nightmare.

R D S wrote:
A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?

There are M.2 SATA drives and M.2 NVMe drives, which are entirely different
things in the same form factor. Be sure to get the right USB adapter for
the drive you have. I haven't tried any personally, but assume they're OK.

And there is. I've pulled the back off again and there's a little board
the size of my thumb screwed onto the mainboard.

That's probably the wifi/Bluetooth card. Does it have extra antenna cables
connecting to it?

That could have been a privacy nightmare.

It would have been. Much safer if you can't connect to the internet

Theo

On 29/09/2020 11:15, Theo wrote:

That's probably the wifi/Bluetooth card.


That's what I assumed,
But it's a 256gb SSD!

Though you wouldn't know by looking at it if you were unfamiliar with
such things.

On 29/09/2020 11:15, Theo wrote:
R D S wrote:
A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?

There are M.2 SATA drives and M.2 NVMe drives, which are entirely different
things in the same form factor. Be sure to get the right USB adapter for
the drive you have. I haven't tried any personally, but assume they're OK.

It won't run anything like as fast over USB though. Even a good SSD
these days can completely saturate a SATA III 6Gb/s channel. M2 is
faster still provided that your hardware can handle it.

In a desktop that doesn't have an M2 adapter on the motherboard you are
better off using a PCi adapter card with it to get the performance. eg.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SupaGeek-PC.../dp/B07CBJ6RH7

(not a recommendation I have no idea if that one is any good or not)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On 29/09/2020 11:26, Martin Brown wrote:

It won't run anything like as fast over USB though.

I just want to see what's on it, and potentially format it and stick it
back in for a better price.

On 29 Sep 2020 at 11:31:03 BST, "R D S" wrote:

On 29/09/2020 11:26, Martin Brown wrote:

It won't run anything like as fast over USB though.

I just want to see what's on it, and potentially format it and stick it
back in for a better price.

I don't know if you can ever tell what has been left intact on a formatted
SSD, but it would probably require specialist hardware to extract so it
probably doesn't matter unless it is very secret.

--
Roger Hayter

On Tuesday, 29 September 2020 11:43:16 UTC+1, Roger Hayter wrote:
On 29 Sep 2020 at 11:31:03 BST, "R D S" wrote:

On 29/09/2020 11:26, Martin Brown wrote:

It won't run anything like as fast over USB though.

I just want to see what's on it, and potentially format it and stick it
back in for a better price.

I don't know if you can ever tell what has been left intact on a formatted
SSD, but it would probably require specialist hardware to extract so it
probably doesn't matter unless it is very secret.

--
Roger Hayter

You can boot the PC using a linux live cd or USB stick and used dd to
write zeros to the whole drive. It won't delete any remapped blocks
but for all practical purposes it will be sufficient.
For example:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress
where sda may be something else depending on your system.

You can find out about the drive with:
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda (or whatever the drive is called)

John

On 29/09/2020 11:25, R D S wrote:
On 29/09/2020 11:15, Theo wrote:

That's probably the wifi/Bluetooth card.

That's what I assumed,
But it's a 256gb SSD!

Though you wouldn't know by looking at it if you were unfamiliar with
such things.


I'm utterly confused. You've had this laptop for ages, without realising
there's an extra disk in there? Doesn't that mean you've never used it,
and there won't be anything on it?

Surely, you'd see it in the BIOS screen? Or in My Computer, if using
Windows?

On 29/09/2020 12:16, wrote:

You can boot the PC using a linux live cd or USB stick and used dd to
write zeros to the whole drive. It won't delete any remapped blocks
but for all practical purposes it will be sufficient.
For example:
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M status=progress
where sda may be something else depending on your system.

You can find out about the drive with:
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda (or whatever the drive is called)

John


I have put the 'drive' in another very similar laptop and booted into
the Windows 10 that was on it.
There's the facility to reset with 2 options, a quick one and a longer
one that claimed to be OK if selling on. It's been at it a fair while so
that's encouraging.

There wasn't much of concern on it anyway, just some work stuff, so that
should suffice.

On 29/09/2020 11:43, Roger Hayter wrote:
On 29 Sep 2020 at 11:31:03 BST, "R D S" wrote:

On 29/09/2020 11:26, Martin Brown wrote:

It won't run anything like as fast over USB though.

I just want to see what's on it, and potentially format it and stick it
back in for a better price.

I don't know if you can ever tell what has been left intact on a formatted
SSD, but it would probably require specialist hardware to extract so it
probably doesn't matter unless it is very secret.

+1. the wear levelling algo means that neither reformatting or writing
to it will erase all the data, conversely any write will either erase a
whole block, or simply add to empty space.

In short just delete files and stop worrying, or physically destroy it.


--
€œIt is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.€�

Thomas Sowell

On 29/09/2020 12:55, GB wrote:
I'm utterly confused. You've had this laptop for ages, without realising
there's an extra disk in there? Doesn't that mean you've never used it,
and there won't be anything on it?

Surely, you'd see it in the BIOS screen? Or in My Computer, if using
Windows?

Not that it really matters publicly but I bought it a few years ago and
spilled a drink in it not that long after (nodded off late at night,
drink in hand), put it in the laptop graveyard with some others.
It had windows on it, I put Ubuntu on it.

The missus rounded them up in a bag for life that we could barely lift
and told me to get shut. So they are going on ebay.

I recalled it having a small SSD and another drive in it but there were
no apparent drives in it at this time, leaving me assuming i'd removed
two drives from it.

Although it transpires there is this non-apparent (to me) drive.

There you go....

In article ,
R D S wrote:
A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?

A mate bought a mains powered adaptor (USB output) which is claimed to
accept all drives from IDE on. Certainly takes IDE and SATA and looked to
have lots of slots for other things.

--
*If your feet smell and your nose runs, you're built upside down.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 10:53:53 +0100, R D S wrote:

A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?

I got one of these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/XT-XINTE-US...bia-wc-p13n1_0
a couple of years ago and use it for cloning the m2 ssd in my pc. It
is OK for that - gets very warm though.

On 29/09/2020 10:53, R D S wrote:

A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?


I'm selling a laptop on eBay,
Buyer is asking me what size the SSD is and we are getting argumentative
as I tell him there isn't one (i've taken the drives out see) and they
are saying there's one in the pics.

And there is. I've pulled the back off again and there's a little board
the size of my thumb screwed onto the mainboard.
That could have been a privacy nightmare.

Yup, M2 format drives are dinky little PCBs with a connector on the end.
Typically about 3/4" wide and then length can vary, but many are around
2.5" or so but can be shorter. Its becoming quite common to have
mounting points and connectors onboard for them these days.

You can get get USB adaptors to access them, however you need to be
aware there are a two supported interfaces on M2 drives: SATA and NVMe
(aka PCIe or PCI Express). The former are generally cheaper and suffer
the same limitation that you get with decent "normal" SSDs on a 6GB/s
SATA interface, that the drive can saturate the interface, and limit
your throughput to around 550MB/s. The NVMe ones can run faster and will
often manage ~3.5GB/s

(The drive connectors usually keyed to prevent you getting the wrong
type of drive into the slot - two notches in the end of a SATA, an one
notch on the NVMe).

The adaptors for the SATA version are usually quite cheap. The NVMe ones
tend to be better made and often made in the form of a fairly close
fitting Ali machining or extrusion, that acts as a heat sink for the
drive (the fast ones can run fairly hot. So expect to pay £30 or so for
a NVMe/USB-C or USB3 caddy. SATA ones are £10 - £ normally.




--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

R D S wrote:
A heads up as much as anything,
Though I could do with an adapter to connect a M2 SSD to a desktop, any
recommendations? Anyone had joy with a USB one?


I'm selling a laptop on eBay,
Buyer is asking me what size the SSD is and we are getting argumentative
as I tell him there isn't one (i've taken the drives out see) and they
are saying there's one in the pics.

And there is. I've pulled the back off again and there's a little board
the size of my thumb screwed onto the mainboard.
That could have been a privacy nightmare.


Can you show us a picture of the label on this drive ?

If we had the make and model number of the laptop,
it might be possible to scan the specs and look for
"suspicious constructs", such as Robson cache. Intel
has tried, multiple times, to make what it thought
were whizzy acceleration features.

https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/robson-cache

Some of those whizzy features, if you just pull one
of those gadgets out of the laptop, it damages the
integrity of storage on one of the real storage devices.
You cannot be careless or in a hurry, when playing
around inside some of the more expensive laptops. They
are a bit too whizzy for their own good.

Some of these features are similar to a RAID1 Mirror.
And rely on the Intel RST driver to work properly.

Paul

On 29/09/2020 16:50, Paul wrote:
Can you show us a picture of the label on this drive ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO8...ew?usp=sharing

R D S wrote:
On 29/09/2020 16:50, Paul wrote:
Can you show us a picture of the label on this drive ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO8...ew?usp=sharing

You must have very large thumbs

The image isn't clear enough to read the label but that appears to be a B&M
keyed module, which could be either SATA or NVMe.

There is also a smaller wifi module, as I indicated.

Theo

On 29/09/2020 18:51, Theo wrote:
R D S wrote:
On 29/09/2020 16:50, Paul wrote:
Can you show us a picture of the label on this drive ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO8...ew?usp=sharing

You must have very large thumbs

The image isn't clear enough to read the label but that appears to be a B&M
keyed module, which could be either SATA or NVMe.

It looks like two key slots to me, so I would guess at SATA.

Interesting both DIMM slots are free...


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 29/09/2020 13:34, R D S wrote:
On 29/09/2020 12:55, GB wrote:
I'm utterly confused. You've had this laptop for ages, without
realising there's an extra disk in there? Doesn't that mean you've
never used it, and there won't be anything on it?

Surely, you'd see it in the BIOS screen? Or in My Computer, if using
Windows?

Not that it really matters publicly but I bought it a few years ago and
spilled a drink in it not that long after (nodded off late at night,
drink in hand), put it in the laptop graveyard with some others.
It had windows on it, I put Ubuntu on it.

The missus rounded them up in a bag for life that we could barely lift
and told me to get shut. So they are going on ebay.

I recalled it having a small SSD and another drive in it but there were
no apparent drives in it at this time, leaving me assuming i'd removed
two drives from it.

Although it transpires there is this non-apparent (to me) drive.

There you go....


Maybe best to check the BIOS screens on the others.

On 29/09/2020 20:24, John Rumm wrote:
On 29/09/2020 18:51, Theo wrote:
R D S wrote:
On 29/09/2020 16:50, Paul wrote:
Can you show us a picture of the label on this drive ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wO8...ew?usp=sharing


You must have very large thumbs

The image isn't clear enough to read the label but that appears to be
a B&M
keyed module, which could be either SATA or NVMe.

It looks like two key slots to me, so I would guess at SATA.

Interesting both DIMM slots are free...

There's 2 more on the other side of the board.
That said all 4 are free, it's a broken laptop selling as spares/repair.

On 29/09/2020 18:51, Theo wrote:

You must have very large thumbs

I rarely have trouble hitching a lift!

Is it one of those odd samsung ones. I had one plugged into a desktop
motherboard, it went dud on me after five years, it was lucky I did have a
windows backup on a real spinning external drive.
Brian

--
--
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"R D S" wrote in message
...
On 29/09/2020 11:15, Theo wrote:

That's probably the wifi/Bluetooth card.

That's what I assumed,
But it's a 256gb SSD!

Though you wouldn't know by looking at it if you were unfamiliar with such
things.

On 30/09/2020 15:48, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Is it one of those odd samsung ones.

It is Samsung, though I only know that from a search of the part number
on it.

On 30/09/2020 15:58, R D S wrote:
On 30/09/2020 15:48, Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
Is it one of those odd samsung ones.

It is Samsung, though I only know that from a search of the part number
on it.

Samsung make some very good SSDs IME.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/