Hope this is the right forum to ask this. I’m getting a free hard drive though a review program I’m part of. Its a Lexar LNM620X001T-RNNNU NM620 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1TB Solid-State Drive. My current drive is a Hynix bc511 hfm256gdjtni-82a0a 256-GB M.2 2280 PCIe-3×4, NVMe. Looks like it’s basically the same except 1TB vs 256GB. I don’t want to lose any speed as even though my laptop is a low-end gaming system, I’ve been pretty happy with it. Sometimes I’m amazed it runs it so well. Anyone want to search on these 2 drives and see if I’m losing anything using this as my main drive? Thanks.
Assuming you have addons then just use the 1TB for your Community and Official folders.
Only one M.2 slot so I’ll have switch it out to be my main drive. I’ve got a Teamworks Sata SSD in the SATA slot I keep my packages folder on.
I suppose you coud get an external NVMe cage, they don’t cost so much but research carefully if you want your drive at full speed.
I appreciate it but you’re not understanding me. I want to swap drives.
Just a suggestion. Anyway the fuller a drive gets the more it slows so assuming they are of similar spec then go with the larger drive.
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You could consider using an external adapter to clone your current OS drive before swapping, but that’s something I’ve never done myself.
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Yeah I haven’t figured out the cloning part yet. I have a 512gb Sata in there too. I could possibly clone the current M.2 drive to it. Put in the new M.2 drive and boot into the Sata drive and then clone it to the new M.2 drive but it seems easier to just clean install Win11 on the new drive. It’s not that big of a deal. All my personal data and the packages folder are on the SATA already. I would just have to contact MS to activate it with the new drive on it. That can be done right?
Right now I’m more concerned if this drive is as fast as my current one. Neither of them have DRAM on them so I’m guessing the speed will be the same. So if any techies could answer that, I’d much oblige.
I did a quick scan: neither of these are really main stream drives. The Hynix particularly is quite old and seems to only be rated at 2,000MB/s read, 900MB/s write. This is pretty slow, and actual numbers will be a lot slower still. The Lexar is newer and seems to be rated fairly typically for a DRAMless PCIe 3 drive at 3,300MB/s read, 3,000MB/s write. Sequential read and write performance seems good while it lagged the better drives in some real world random tests I saw. One test you can look at here
But in spite of that, on the face of it you should probably still be markedly better off with the Lexar in the typical read-biased MSFS application.
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Thanks a lot. I didn’t see that link when I was searching. Yeah the laptop is an HP Pavilion gaming laptop I got on a black Friday deal for $449 a couple of years ago. I5 processor, GTX 1650. Low end compared to what most people are using, but surprisingly, it’s a nice little laptop. I’m able to run most things on medium to high settings. I hook it up to a 65 inch TV and it does extremely well, looks awesome. 30-40 fps. Great so the Lexmark won’t be slower which was my main concern. It doesn’t look too bad. And you can’t complain with free lol. Thanks again. I feel better.
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The later Hynix drives are as good as it gets for the money. 2TB Gold Hynix P31 is $107 on Amazon (USA). It comes with its own cloning software which is a simple software designed to be foolproof.
The platinum Hynix P41 is about as well loved right now as any in the world. ($157 Amazon, 2TB).
I would go for the 2TB version myself.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B099RHVB42/
https://www.amazon.com/SK-hynix-Platinum-Internal-Compact/dp/B09QVD9V7R
Cloning with Macrium reflect (free version) instead of the simpler and easier Hynix software. But it shows you the idea.
You can then put your old drive into the little converter box, and you then have a portable USB drive. So the old drive still serves a purpose.
If the computer/laptop does not boot, just put the old drive back in and maybe try again.
Be careful which you clone to which. If you clone your new (empty) drive to your old drive, then both drives will now be empty 
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If my old drive was more than 256gb it would be worth an enclosure. But 256gb really aint worth it. I’ll just clean install windows to the new drive.
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There is that but at the same time its big enough to use as a system drive plus the MSFS core plus a fixed virtual memory. I am pretty paranoid about keeping my packages drive free from other activity.
Edit: - but probably not a good idea for a laptop
BTW check first that your laptop is user upgradable, I’ve had bad experiences when dismantling some of them, in particular keyboard ribbon connections can be very delicate.
It is. I’ve already added a 512gb SSD Sata drive, which is where I keep my packages folder. Reinstalling MSFS will be a breeze.
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