[bigiain]

I just realised writing another response, that a large portion of the reasons I need to run Windows occasionally if to use weird hardware that's windows specific. Things that run odd USB protocols, our even worse require a USB-serial converter with a specific chipset.

For me, it's way easier to keep a "hardware Windows machine" available than to debug why these things don't quite work right in a virtualised environment every time I need to use em.

[b112]

I just realized that SSDs are sorta 3 1/2" floppy size. I picture turning off the machine, and popping one out of a caddy for another.

The circle is vlosed.

[paulmd]

ICY DOCK has you covered. it's kind of their thing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040Z924Q

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084H5ZKPT

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B9HK4QG

at only $1.72 per gram, it's the greatest bargain in the computer market today.

[b112]

That's huge, even though I've used some ICY products in the past.

I just meant, if the SSD was slid in and out, bare, by itself.. it would feel like a floppy experience.

[paulmd]

ICY DOCK can accommodate even the most sophisticated and discerning tastes… ;)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZJNR91

(really they do one thing and it's this. They practically have a corner on the “aftermarket hotswap drive bay accessory” market, and they have more variations than anyone can imagine :V )

Honestly I would love to try the "hotswap M.2 bay" or "hotswap U.2 bay" things, but it really does drive home how uneven the NVMe future is. Consumers get maybe two NVMes on their motherboard, meanwhile you need 16 pcie lanes to drive a 4-bay hotswap thing. We live in a society where a 1-socket server might have 24 nvme bays attached to it and yet consumers can't even populate an addon bay for their gamer case. (bottom text)

really does drive home the lack of pcie lanes on consumer stuff (given how much pcie continues to be the defacto standard for high-speed expansion) and the death of the "workstation"/"HEDT" segment as being a relatively accessible thing. Nowadays there are client machines and servers, and precious little in-between. You almost might as well just buy an Epyc (ROMED8-2T looks really nice) or just buy a used server as a backend/fileserver/NAS.

[b112]

That's awesome. Thanks!