@john_dennis thanks, mine are all spinning. The new MB does have an M.2 slot, but I am not up on that technology yet. If I had an NVME drive to the slot, do you think I can still use the 4 SATA drives effectively giving me 5 drives (with one being the DVD/Bluray Burner). Or maybe I should make the burner an external since I only use it occasionally. I just thought about that.

@DMT3 Hi, what do you mean by 'spinning'?

I have a Raid card with 2 x 2tb M.2 drives on it,

(C) Local Disk - Windows & programs & (D) Editing Files where all my .veg files & temp media is,

the other drives are a mix of SSD, HDD Drives & USB drives that i use for storage

'The new MB does have an M.2 slot, but I am not up on that technology yet.' I would look into that 👍 they're really easy to fit & faster than other drives, I put one on my old PC 👍

@Former user

I mean all of my drives currently are standard SATA spinning harddrives. thanks for the information.

@DMT3 👍 spinning disks are slow, if you don't want to get into the M.2 stuff right now you could just get an SSD that will connect just like your spinny ones do, that would speed everything up a fair bit

@DMT3 Always keep veg and project files on ssd. If your new computer doesn't have m.2 slots on the motherboard, a small pcie board works too.

If you have an open drive open bay in the front, a dual or quad drive sata bay is another way to go... these take hot swappable 2.5 inch sata drives that connect to sata ports on the computer mother board and can be either ssd sata or notebook hard disks... made by kingwin, icydock, and startech. The sata ssds are quicker than the spinning ones. Worst case scenario is a spinning hd jumping around like crazy trying to host both the os and Vegas projects.

To be totally honest, for the operating system and video editing purposes, these days you need to move on from magnetic storage.

6-8 years ago upgrading a hard drive to an SSD was the biggest performance enhancement you could make to ANY system. Today, with hard drives getting bigger but not faster and SSDs massively increasing in speed, the upgrade is near life changing! It would be like going from floppy disks to a hard drive.

Hard drives are still useful for mass storage - like when you need 8-20 terabytes, ideally in a RAID in a NAS - and cheap backup purposes. But do yourself a favor and try to switch your work disks to SSDs!

@daniel-t I understand, but I am upgrading from an old computer to a new one and I already have several new magnetic drives. Have to cut costs. I also have concerns of storing. In many cases you can retrieve data even from a crashed harddrive. A SSD drive, I am not so sure about. It is probably like the USB flash drives, if it dies, the data is lost. But I am sure I will start upgrading as budget permits.

@DMT3

I'd start by moving your boot image to one of these:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1605432-REG/wd_wdbapy5000anc_wrsn_500gb_sn850_black_gaming.html/reviews?msclkid=301a3682acb212809a0d547d66c0d694

Use Macrium Reflect 8 Free: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree to save an image of your current boot disk and restore the image to the WD NVMe disk.

That will move you into this century and free up a SATA port for your spinning disks.

@DMT3 And I would argue that there is no single bigger upgrade you could make to the performance and overall feel of your system than moving to an SSD. I wouldn't spend money on buying other parts if you cannot add a $50-$75 SSD, because the hard drive will still be your major limiting factor.

And, personally, moving to an entirely new system I would not suggest cloning/duplicating your existing installation of Windows. Treat the new SSD as a blank drive, install Windows 11 clean onto it, and keep your old hard drive installation intact and connected to transfer data as needed, until you feel you can wipe it.

I've been using SSDs in my systems for at least 13 years now, and back then the boost was so great I installed them in every system I was responsible for, even my parents. Until this past December, however, I still maintained a 4 disk RAID array in my primary desktop for video editing. However when I built my new system, I started off with just the SSD to get it going, then transferred the drives from my old PC as I didn't feel like buying new ones. And I was completely shocked at how much noise and vibration they added - what I had attributed to case fans was, in fact, just 7200RPM hard drives being hard drives.

I immediately made plans to get rid of them. And did. And now my ears are happy! So are my studio audio recordings. Plus, everything's way faster. Working with 10 gigabyte files takes mere seconds instead of a minute.

@daniel-t

I wouldn't clone an old system to new hardware, either. I was operating on the, perhaps faulty assumption, that the new system was already configured. If the new system is a blank slate, I would definitely install the Windows and Applications on the new NVMe disk.

I know better than to clone. I have built several computers, but the my two current computers are quite old tech wise, so I finally decided to upgrade. I am thinking about the SSD. I am reading as much as I can to determine exactly which one fits my new MB. The manual says it is an M.2 Key M PCIe 3.0 x 4 and another slot is a 3.0 x 2.

Is this drive compatible?

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-970-evo-plus-500gb-pcie-gen-3-x4-nvme-internal-solid-state-drive-with-v-nand-technology/6324468.p?skuId=6324468

"The manual says it is an M.2 Key M PCIe 3.0 x 4 and another slot is a 3.0 x 2."

Is that the motherboard manual? For the linked drive to work at full throughput, you would need to a PCIe 3.0 x 4 slot. Post the link to the motherboard manual.

Sorry, yes that is the motherboard manual, so it sounds like that is correct. It has two M.2 slots, x4 and x2. Here is a link to Asus mb documents page. The manual is the PDF labeled "PRIME H610M-E D4 User’s Manual ( English Edition )"

page 12, 1.2.1

@DMT3 This i believe is your MB https://www.awd-it.co.uk/components/motherboards/intel-motherboards/h610-b660-h670-chipset-lga-1700/asus-prime-h610m-e-d4-intel-ddr4-micro-atx-motherboard-lga-1700.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw6fyXBhBgEiwAhhiZsu4OyrX1QmCqidqYOxwAQaPDGaRG3ytdF1Mc5gwGdMbZItzDnxssHRoCStsQAvD_BwE

Storage
Total supports 2 x M.2 slots and 4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports
Intel® H610 Chipset
M.2_1 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x4 mode)
M.2_2 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x2 mode)
4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

When i put an M.2 drive in my old PC, start up time went from sitting waiting for it to boot while i drank a cuppa, to switching it, going to put the kettle on, coming back to see it sat waiting for me fully started before the kettle had started to boil, as has been stated Well worth the investment 👍👍

PS in my picture the drive 'All Files (F)' is an SSD that connects like a spiny one, that must be 7yr old, it has my programs exe files from when i download n install something, it has been in 3 pc's so far & i just install my programs from as n when i need to, Like last yr i wiped this pc clean, reloaded Windows then used the files on that (F) drive to reload my programs. not saying it doesn't happen but I've never had an SSD fail on me, not even a little portable USB dongle type stick drive,

The drives are different sizes

& on your MB there's 3 screw mounts (red dots) where the 3 sizes available screw on, your MB should have come with some little screws & poss some little stand-offs the go underneath like fat washers

@Former user yes, that is the one. I know it is probably the cheapest of the Gen12 boards, but I needed to stay low cost as possible. I am learning terminology of the SSD drives. Is the PCIe 3.0 x 4 compatible with an NVMe drive with PCIe 3.0 x 4 specs? Or does this PCIe not support NVMe? Like I said, right now it is like a foreign language. I have been tech generations behind for a while.

PCIe is backwards compatible, so you can run a 4.0 SSD drive in a 3.0 slot, or an x4 lane drive as x2 lanes if necessary.

Would you like to talk about the system specs you’re planning to get and what your budget is? We may be able to help you configure the “best” system possible for the price, knowing where it’s wise to spend money and where it isn’t.

Or, you may want to post on Reddit in r/buildapc to get lots of feedback and configuration suggestions. Sometimes those folks can pull off a budgetary miracle. :)

@DMT3 PCIe does support Raid M.2, My MB has a Raid card on it with (C) Local Drive & (D) Editing files, they are 2 fast M.2 drives 2TB each, Programs & Windows on (C) Local Drive, files & media on (D) Editing files, they are both on the same PCIe card tho & i think they may slow each other down by a fraction, so i have another raid card exactly the same waiting to add to the MB so i can separate the two M.2 drives, my MB allows for 3 M.2 drives to be added direct to the MB tho, so when i get my 💩 together I'll decide where to put each, at the moment it's in a drawer

It fits a bit like a graphics card

It's like this inside, i can fit 4 M.2 drives, but unless you intend on adding more drives i'd put yours on the MB

@DMT3 PS as @daniel-t says what's best for you & your PC you'll have to confer 😉👍

@Former user The motherboard he’s considering only has a single 3.0 x1 slot (assuming the GPU slot will be used for a GPU) so an add-in RAID card isn’t going to be possible. Since he does have pretty high storage needs I would like to get him into a more capable board (one x4 and one x2 m.2 drive isn’t a lot), but it all depends on what he needs and how much he can spend.

@daniel-t @Former user I appreciate both of your inputs. I have already purchased the equipment based on my budget. I know it is a minimal board, but my needs have changed a lot. I did want more storage, but it is what it is. I am just trying to maximize it now. Again though, is an NVMe drive compatible with this MB? I am getting confused reading the information available on the web. There seems to be PCIe support with NVMe and without. My boards manual does not specifically mention NVMe.

I will be using the PCIe x16 for a graphics card and the PCIe x1 for my Decklink card.

@DMT3 Your MB specs say x4 (M.2_1 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x4 mode))

so these will be stacked one on top of each other, there'll be two ports to slot the drive into, you can see the 2242/2260/2280 numbers on the pic

@DMT3 Forget about NVMe, just call it an M.2 drive,

Google says - NVMe is the interface, and M. 2 is the latest form factor for SSDs. Combine the two, and you have a lightning-fast drive with almost no visible footprint, and it is super-easy to install.

If you buy that Samsung (or similar) - 970 EVO Plus 500GB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive you posted earlier it will fit, there's some confusing descriptions, so i would drop the 'NVMe'  & just call it an M.2 drive,

That Evo link says - Experience high-performance storage with this Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD. Advanced NVMe and Samsung TurboWrite technologies boost computing performance with read and write speeds of up to 3,500MB/sec. and 3,300MB/sec. This Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 solid-state drive boasts a 500GB capacity to store core components and numerous programs