Not all SSDs are the same

(Or why I should stick with software, rather than hardware!)

I’d ordered some larger SSDs from MATS Systems this week to upgrade a couple of laptops that were running out of room. I’d scanned through the list and saw Samsung EVO 500GB. Yep, “add to cart” x 2.

Job done (or so I thought).

They arrived promptly yesterday, and near the end of the day I disassembled the first laptop to extract the existing smaller-capacity SSD so I could put it in the disk duplicator. I then ripped open the box of the newly purchased Samsung SSD and to my horror, it didn’t look anything like the old one!

In fact it looked a lot like this:

“But David”, you say, “that’s an M.2 SSD!”

Well yes, yes it is, and that’s exactly what it turns out I ordered - not realising that “M.2” doesn’t just mean “fast” or “better” but it’s an indication of the actual form factor.

I now understood that what I should have ordered was the 2.5” model - not the M.2 one.

So what was I going to do? First step, post to Twitter and see if I get any responses - and I did get some helpful advice from friends:

Unfortunately I’d ripped open the box so it wasn’t in a great state to return. Instead I sourced one of these Simplecom converter enclosures to see if I could use it in the 2.5” laptop slot after all.

As Adam had mentioned on Twitter, one important thing was to identify what kind of key the SSD I had was using. You can tell that by looking at the edge connector. Here’s the one I had:

This is apparently a “B+M” key connector (as it has the two slots). The specs for the Simplecom enclosure say it’s suitable for either “B” or “B+M” so I was good there.

Unpacking the enclosure, there’s a tiny screw one one side to undo, then you can pry open the cover.

With the cover off, four more screws to extract before you can access the mounting board

Now it’s just a simple matter of sliding in the SSD and using the supplied screw to keep it in.

Then reassemble the enclosure and it’s ready to test.

I tried it out in a spare laptop - pulling out the existing SSD and using the duplicator to image that onto the new SSD (and taking extra care to make sure I had them in the correct slots in the duplicator. It would be a disaster getting that wrong!)

Then pop the new SSD back in the laptop and see if it boots up.. Yay, it did!

The great news is MATS were able to arrange to swap over the other SSD (the one I hadn’t opened yet) with a proper EVO 860 2.5” model. And I learned that if I had been more careful opening the box on the first one, that probably could have been swapped with just a small restocking fee too.

So after feeling like I’d really messed up, things ended up not too bad after all :-)

2018-2019 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award

I first received Microsoft’s MVP award in October 2015. My most recent renewal just occurred on July 1st (aka the early hours of July 2nd here in Adelaide), which was a really nice way to start the week. My 4th consecutive year of being an MVP.

To quote the confirmation email, it was given “in recognition of your exceptional technical community leadership. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in the following technical communities during the past year: Visual Studio and Development Technologies”

For me, that’s leading the Adelaide .NET User Group, occasional blogging here, speaking at user groups (and the odd conference) and open source contributions. I like to think that the things I do that have been recognised are things that I would be trying to do in any case.

It isn’t something I take for granted. A number of MVPs I know didn’t make the cut this year - and it’s always a bit of a mystery why some continue and some don’t.

I’m also aware that should my own (or Microsoft’s) priorities change in the future, then it may no longer be for me. But for now, I really appreciate receiving the award and hope I can make the most of the opportunities it gives me.

Migrating Redmine issues to VSTS work items with the REST API

Redmine is an open-source project management/issue tracking system. I wanted to copy issues out of Redmine and import them into a Visual Studio Team Services project.

Extracting issues can be done by using the “CSV” link at the bottom of the Issues list for a project in Redmine. This CSV file doesn’t contain absolutely everything for each issue (eg. attachments and custom data from any plugins). Another alternative would be to query the database directly, but that wasn’t necessary for my scenario.

To migrate the data to VSTS you can use a simple PowerShell script, making use of the VSTS REST API.

You’ll need to create a Personal Access Token. Be aware that all items will be created under the account linked to this token - there’s no way that I’m aware of that you can set the “CreatedBy” field to point to another user.

Notice in the script how we handle different fields for different work items types (eg. Product Backlog Items use the ‘Description’ field, whereas Bugs use ‘Repro Steps’), and for optional fields (eg. not all Redmine issues had the ‘Assignee’ field set).

The full set of fields (and which work item types they apply to) is documented here. If you have more fields in Redmine that can be mapped to ones in VSTS then go ahead and add them.