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Confused by "Dell Ultra Speed Drive" options being separate from other hard drive options
I'm trying to build a very fast personal workstation for software development. So I want very fast SSDs. I don't need RAID, just two, fast, single drives.
Running through the options of a 3630 tower, it seemed straightforward enough. I chose a 1 TB class 50 SSD for the main because it seemed like that was the fastest I could get. Then I choose a 1 TB class 20 for the secondary drive because it did not give me the option of choose class 40 or 50.
So I figured I was done with hard drives. I then scrolled past the 3rd, 4th and 5th drive options and then came to the section titled
"Dell Ultra-Speed Drive"
So now I am confused. What is the difference between the drive options they list here and the ones I just went through. Why are these not listed above? Are the Dell USDs faster than what I've chosen?
bmcowboy
573 Posts
0
July 16th, 2019 07:00
Hi @Decaffeinated ,
When referring to page 12 of the Dell Precision 3630 Workstation Owners Manual:
There's a m.2 slot on the motherboard. Storage Matrix shown above actually tells that when a m.2 NVMe drive installed on the motherboard as boot drive, you can add another NVMe drive to be installed on a PCIe m.2 interposer card as the 2nd drive. That means:
- When you choose a m.2 drive in the 1st "Hard Drive" section, it means a drive to be installed on the motherboard.
- When you further choose a m.2 drive in the last "Dell Ultra-Speed Drive" section, that means ANOTHER NVMe drive to be installed on a PCIe interposer card.
- You will have 2 NVMe drives on your system eventually.
I talked with a Dell Support for further clarification:
And yes, he proves that my understanding is correct. Also, the "Ultra-Speed Drive" is just a name of their NVMe drive with no performance difference with a normal one. And most likely it would be installed in a Ultra-Speed Duo Card, just like the one for Precision 3930 Rack.
Hope this clarifies your confusion.
JOcean
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
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12K Posts
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July 10th, 2019 07:00
Are you talking about the PCIe x16 card for NVME M.2 drives?
https://www.newegg.com/p/14G-006P-00001
bmcowboy
573 Posts
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July 12th, 2019 12:00
Hi @Decaffeinated ,
As what @JOcean mentioned, I believe you're talking about the Dell Precision UltraSpeed Drive Quad x16 card. It's a PCIe x16 RAID card with 4 NVMe slots. Noted that it may or may not be configured as a bootable RAID volume depending on which workstation model it works with. But as you mentioned in the very beginning that RAID is not your concerns, you may simply neglect it.
Decaffeinated
5 Posts
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July 15th, 2019 10:00
Hi,
Actually no I am not talking about the card. I specifically mean the drives. If you look at the page for virtually any of the Precision towers, you'll see what I mean. For example, check out this page for the 3630
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/small-business-deals/precision-3630-tower/spd/precision-3630-workstation/xctopt3630us
You have the section for "Hard Drive"
Scroll down a little further and you'll see "2nd Hard Drive" (then "3rd", "4th" and "5th"). Then below those you will see "Optical Drive", "Raid Connectivity" and finally "Dell Ultra Speed Drive"
They're not talking about a card they mean a drive.
Confusing.
Decaffeinated
5 Posts
1
July 17th, 2019 07:00
It does indeed clarify it. That was huge. Thank you