U.2 vs M.2 drives: which drive is best for a creative work environment.

Creative professionals must make many decisions when building the best work environment for post production. For people using video editing software like DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premier, and Final Cut Pro, the best solution should be simple and reliable. So how do you know what's best? Check out our article on how to find the NVMe storage that's right for you!

When creating an IT workspace for creative professionals who use video editing kits, audio editing, VFX compositing workstations, color correction, and more, there are many layers to explore. The solutions must be reliable, easy to implement, and affordable. With the explosion of NVMe (PCIe-based) storage media such as M.2 and U.2, traditional hard drives or internal solid-state drives may no longer be an attractive solution in an internal work environment.

What is U.2 storage?

U.2 is a connection type that can be used for various types of drives, but is mainly used as a connection for NVMe solid-state drives. NVMe storage uses flash memory modules to transfer data over PCIe lanes instead of the traditional SATA bus. The result is a sixfold increase in available throughput for single volume transfers (this is a real, not synthetic benchmark). Typically, NVMe storage comes in three forms: full-size PCIe cards, M.2 blade drives, and standard 2.5″/3.5″ U.2 drives.

Because U.2 drives use these standard formats, they can be mounted in your system like a traditional mechanical hard drive and connected using a U.2 cable (which is similar to a SATA cable). This work environment allows the U.2 drive to be installed in a computer case or server rack, as well as in an external case or docking station.

What makes U.2 media stand out?

U.2 compares exceptionally well to 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, especially when it comes to input/output operations per second (IOPS). IOPS is a measure used to evaluate the speed of storage by randomly reading and writing very small files scattered throughout the volume.

Measuring performance in IOPS can be a useful benchmark for VFX artists and sound designers. VFX artists typically work with image sequence based formats such as EXR, DPX, PNG, TIFF - the list goes on. Image sequence-based formats are uncompressed or minimally compressed, significantly reducing CPU load. Even older Macs can work with these types of media.

However, since each video frame is saved as a separate file, the storage device must navigate throughout the disk to retrieve the required frames and combine them for playback. This makes mechanical hard drives such as platter drives and even SATA SSDs unsuitable for VFX artists needing real-time playback of 4K UHD image sequences in software such as After Effects without first making a cache in RAM.
The same problem applies to sound designers. Even though uncompressed audio takes up much less space than uncompressed video, sound designers will be working with dozens, if not hundreds, of tracks and audio sources simultaneously during playback. The storage media that powers Pro Tools must download files from the entire disk, which can cause playback hiccups if the download isn't fast enough.

PCIe-based storage media such as U.2 and M.2 read and write IOPS 6 times faster than traditional internal SSD and 1000 times faster than mechanical platter drives. The difference is so significant that the poor mechanical drive doesn't even show up in the chart below.