Laptop SSD Jargons and one nifty trick and links for further detailed info

M.2 It is just a form factor. It does not denote how fast the drive is.
NVMe is not a physical connection. It is a protocol laid forward by intel in order to access high speed storage media via PCI express bus https://superuser.com/questions/1028996/nvme-su... Kindly read that article as it has explained the thing very lucidly.
U.2 is on the other hand is a full package of physical cum communication protocols. It supports upto four PCIe lanes and two SATA lanes. As per wikipedia “While the U.2 standard does not imply a form factor of the device that uses it, in practice U.2 is used only on 2.5” SSDs. 2.5" drives are typically physically larger than M.2 drives and thus typically have larger capacities." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.2#U.2_compared_...
RST vs AHCI Well in UEFI settings of notebooks, under storage option(varies from manufacturer to manufacturer) you see the mentioned two options. Both AHCI and RST have been laid forward by Intel. RST and AHCI both can handle NVMe drives, given that your computer supports them. RST supports both RAID features and Intel Optane memory. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SATA_Ex... <-That link gives a very accurate flow chart of operation between the both modes. Actually the image shows the working flow of NVMe and AHCI protocols. RST also supports NVMe by default. So, take it in this way, if you have an NVMe SSD and you think choosing RST over AHCI in UEFI settings gonna make your drive perform better is wrong. Performance difference is not that noteworthy. https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-... This is a very beautiful QnA style support provided by a Dell guy. But it is also applicable for other manufacturers as well.
SLC,MLC,TLC SLC It is a kind of cell used for storage in SSDs. It has the highest life span. MLC it has stands between SLC and TLC in terms of life span. TLC has the lowest life span. Samsung Evo uses MLC cells. That’s why it costs more. My Laptop has 1TB SSD but is a TLC one. My SSD won’t last longer than an SSD that uses MLC cells. So, guys keep this thing in your mind before buying an SSD. And you guys know about TBW and other endurance parameters.
A Nifty Trick I think Acer laptops those have SSDs in em ship with Intel RST mode on. If you ever need/ want to(because you are a curious guy) switch to AHCI mode then do this. Before doing anything, Goto command prompt in Admin rights(Right Click n stuff) and type “bcdedit /set safeboot minimal”. Then you shut down. Goto UEFI settings and change AHCI over RST. It gonna say it will data n stuff. Nothing to worry. Press yes. Then you should be boot in to Windows Safe Mode with AHCI drivers. No user intervention is necessary. Again go to Command Prompt in Admin rights, type “bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot”. That’s it. Just reboot. Congratulations you changed to AHCI mode from RST. I have personally done it. So, I can vouch for this. https://support.thinkcritical.com/kb/articles/s...
2280 vs 2260 vs 2242 Those are physical size dimensions in which M.2 SSDs come in. Pretty self explanatory they are, aren’t they? 2280 means 22 X 80 mm. Same goes for rest of the numbers. 2280 dissipates heat better in comparison to the rest of the standards. So, it means better performance.
TRIM this is a garbage collection ATA command. OS does not delete things from HDD after we delete things. In mechanical ones they used to get overwritten. But it would cause problems in SSDs as data are stored in cells. So, deleted files need to be deleted properly from time to time. https://getprostorage.com/blog/ssd-garbage-coll...
Command to Check if TRIM is enabled or not “fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify” run this from Command Prompt in Admin mode. If you get result lik disabledeletenotify=0 then you have got TRIM enabled. If it returns disabledeletenotify=1 , then run “fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0” and you are set.
RETRIM trick Search for Defragment and Optimize in start menu. It is by default turned on.. It is good. Windows is intelligent enough to know to not to degragment SSD. Don’t worry. Don’t disable it.
Kindly run command without any quotes on
And guys know the make n model of your SSD. Download your vendor specific softwares. They often include the firmware updates through ‘em, ex Magician, Intel Toolbox. Contact your notebook customer service providers before doing anything though. I really don’t know Why Lenovo Premium Support gives such third class support. They don’t know the purpose of AHCI n RST option in UEFI. They say RST is better blindly. Whatever, knowledge is available in the internet for free.
I understand it is a pretty basic nooby piece of article. Have my sincere apologies for any mistakes. Rectify ‘em ’https://cdn2.desidime.com/emojis/medium/smi...ng’ class=‘e-moji’ alt=‘smile’ border=‘0’/>