Anyone owns a m.2 PCIe adapter card and your sys. no longer see your m.2 SATA drive?

[Happy Hopping]

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER_M2_X4_MINI_CARD/

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...re=m.2_ssd_adapter-_-0E6-0084-00046-_-Product

for PCIe adapter card like the above, and you insert your SATA M.2 SSD in, has anyone lost their SSD? As in the system lost your SSD?

I'm still using SATA 2.5" SSD but some website said these M.2 SATA SSD on the above Asus hyper card is "Up to 6x faster than high speed SATA III SSD" (see this link)

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-sp...D-in-a-PCI-e-SSD-slot-vs-a-non-PCI-e-SSD-slot

but I never use m.2 SATA SSD on these PCIe adapter before. So I wonder if there is any chance that the M.2 SSD can disappear?

P.S. is it really a lot faster than SATA 2.5" SSD?

 

[Luke M]

Lost? At first I thought you were talking about physically losing the card, but reading carefully, you must mean something else, but I don't know what...

 

[MrGreg62]

I don't know what you mean by losing your SSD but running a M.2 SATA SSD in that adapter will be no faster than a SATA III SSD. You will see improved speeds with a M2 NVMe Pcie SSD. Also be advised AFAIK you may or may not be able to boot from said drive depending on your OS and support of your motherboard. You may also see increased boot times waiting for drivers to load if they are required.

 

[Happy Hopping]

by lost, I mean your sys. no longer see the drive.

 

[Happy Hopping]

I don't know what you mean by losing your SSD but running a M.2 SATA SSD in that adapter will be no faster than a SATA III SSD. You will see improved speeds with a M2 NVMe Pcie SSD. Also be advised AFAIK you may or may not be able to boot from said drive depending on your OS and support of your motherboard. You may also see increased boot times waiting for drivers to load if they are required.

so how come links like the last one I inserted said they are "Up to 6x faster than high speed SATA III SSD"?

 

[drescherjm]

A M.2 SATA SSD is still running SATA III so you don't get any performance benefit from the interface.

"Up to 6x faster than high speed SATA III SSD"?

That is for NVMe drives.

 

[MrGreg62]

so how come links like the last one I inserted said they are "Up to 6x faster than high speed SATA III SSD"?

The last one you quoted has 2 M.2 SATA slots and one NVMe slot. Combined with a NVMe drive you will see the speed increase.

 

[Happy Hopping]

Alright so it's same speed. But using PCIe card (instead of using the onboard M.2 Slot), are these PCI e adapter card stable? Because I don't want to turn on the PC one day and the BIOS is not seeing drive D. Has anyone got any bad experience that their M.2 SATa on a PCI e card no longer recognize by the BIOS?

 

[Grimlaking]

Ok.. Yes SOMEONE SOMEWHERE has had a bad experience with the add on card. I will assure you of that regardless of if you buy it or not.

Specific to this forum... I can't speak to that. I think most people who have gone with an NVMe drive have done so on a motherboard that has the functionality native.. or did it with a Raid card to get crazy performance.

I suspect they are fine but as stated above read reviews, look for any compatibility issues with your mobo/bios revisions. All of this will help you reach a conclusion.

 

[Happy Hopping]

A M.2 SATA SSD is still running SATA III so you don't get any performance benefit from the interface.

.

Okay, I just re-read that 3rd link. Is it possible you guys are wrong? because that link says:

The peak performance of the SATA 3.0 interface is raw 6.0GT/s (uncoded 600MB/s) in each direction.
The peak performance of the PCIe 3.0 interface is 8.0GT/s per lane, so 16GT/s for the x2 interface, 32GT for the x4 interface. That translates to an uncoded 1.969GB/s and 3.938GB/s for x4.

So bottom line, the PCIe x 2 version can run up to 3x faster than SATA, the PCIe x 4 version can run up to 6x faster than SATA.

THERE are also other article talks about the same thing:


http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2203858/faster-normal-ssd.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2884565/ssd-faster-pcie.html

 

[drescherjm]

No I am not wrong it is the first line since you are talking about a SATA M.2. drive.

The peak performance of the SATA 3.0 interface is raw 6.0GT/s (uncoded 600MB/s) in each direction.

None of the PCIe performance metrics will be in effect unless you use a NVMe m.2 SSD like the Samsung 960 (and an adapter that supports it). NVMe M.2 SSDs cost about 2 times what a SATA M.2 drive does for the same amount of storage.

The ASUS card from your first post is a NVMe only card.

The StarTech card from the first post has 2 SATA M.2 ports on the front that connect to SATA ports on your motherboard and 1 NVMe port.

 

[MixManSC]

In post #10 "M.2 vs SATA SSD"...... that does not even make sense. A SATA SSD can be M.2, mSata, or a traditional cable connected drive.

SATA is SATA is SATA. Does not matter what you connect the SATA device to it cannot go faster than SATA unless you combine multiple SATA drives in RAID but even then the individual SATA drives are still not going to go faster than their fastest SATA speed. M.2 is just a connector, not a specific speed drive interface. An M.2 slot can be wired directly to the PCIe bus, and it can also be wired to the SATA bus. For NVMe to work the BIOS must support it and of course you must have an NVMe SSD. Also even if the BIOS can support an NVMe SSD that does not also mean it can boot from one... It is still somewhat complicated and really only the newest boards from the past year or so really support booting from one.

NVMe drives on the other hand can flat out spank SATA drives in speed but in real world use its not very noticeable over SATA drives. Yes an NVMe drive can hit 2000+ mb/s in a benchmark but again, in real world use it really does not "feel" all that much quicker than a SATA drive. My Dell Precision T7910 I'm typing this on came with a 4 port PCIe NVMe card. It has 4 M.2 slots for NVMe SSD's and I have a couple of Samsung 512GB NVMe SSD's on it. As mentioned, your boot time is actually a bit slower because the BIOS has to ID the NVMe SSD's in a different way. Also loading anything other than Windows 10 takes a bit more work since you have to add NVMe support while installing the OS.

 

[Happy Hopping]

The ASUS card from your first post is a NVMe only card.
.

are you sure? How do you know this? It's not on their website, I email them and they won't tell me. I've been trying to get the sys. requirement on that card for months.

 

[Happy Hopping]

In post #10 "M.2 vs SATA SSD"...... that does not even make sense. A SATA SSD can be M.2, mSata, or a traditional cable connected drive.

SATA is SATA is SATA. Does not matter what you connect the SATA device to it cannot go faster than SATA unless you combine multiple SATA drives in RAID but even then the individual SATA drives are still not going to go faster than their fastest SATA speed. M.2 is just a connector, not a specific speed drive interface. An M.2 slot can be wired directly to the PCIe bus, and it can also be wired to the SATA bus.
.

okay, I did omit 1 sentence from the above quote on my post no. 10. So here it is again re-quote, but I bold face the missing line:

The peak performance of the SATA 3.0 interface is raw 6.0GT/s (uncoded 600MB/s) in each direction, which is fast enough for an HDD raid, but not fast enough for some of the latest SSDs. The PCIe SSD in my ASUS laptop benchmarks at around 1200MB/s, for example.

The peak performance of the PCIe 3.0 interface is 8.0GT/s per lane, so 16GT/s for the x2 interface, 32GT for the x4 interface. That translates to an uncoded 1.969GB/s and 3.938GB/s for x4.

So, as you can see, his PCIe SSD is at 1200 MB/s, not the good old 600 MB/s

Now, in the 2nd link on post no. 10, the article is written on July 2014, in which there is no NVMe, so obviously, the writer is talking about a M.2 NGFF SSD that goes to your motherboard or on an adapter card. Re-post link here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2203858/faster-normal-ssd.html

so 1 of the guy said:

No, a M.2 SATA SSD won't be any faster then a "regular" 2.5" SATA drive. For more speed you have to choose a M.2 SSD that uses PCI express like the Plextor M6e. This will be some 50% faster than SATA III.

AND there are 2 links on that article that seems to debunk your story:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2104...a-sata-drive-and-not-much-more-expensive.html

http://www.hardwareschotte.de/magazin/alles-was-man-ueber-m-2-wissen-muss-a41637

looks like they are saying that for a M.2 SSD such as the Intel 540S SSD, goes in a PCI e adapter, it gives 32 Gbit/s, and as a result, 3200 Mbytes / sec.

Or in a way, if you put a Intel 540p SSD on a Startech PCI E card (link from post no. 1), then you are looking at the equvialent of Plexor M6e, am I right?

 

[drescherjm]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2104...a-sata-drive-and-not-much-more-expensive.html

Is a NVMe drive not SATA.

 

[Pandur]

M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIE are two different things. They don't speak the same language basically. So you need a M.2 PCIE compatible drive to use an adapter. Unless the adapter has a SATA to PCIE bridge chip (translator) built-in.

 

[drescherjm]

Unless the adapter has a SATA to PCIE bridge chip (translator) built-in.

Or require SATA inputs like this adapator does
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...re=m.2_ssd_adapter-_-0E6-0084-00046-_-Product

For this card you connect the M.2 SATA ports through SATA cables to your motherboard. The PCIe part is only used to power the M.2 SATA drives.

Although the PCIe interface does also provide data and power for the M.2 NVMe slot on the back.

 

[Pandur]

Really? That's what you're going to nitpick about? Of course you don't need a bridge chip if you don't connect the SATA drives to the PCIE bus! /facedesk

 

[drescherjm]

I am not trying to nitpick. I just wanted to show the OP what we are talking about since he is obviously confused. I was also hoping the first pic would answer part of his first concern. That the adapter would fail in the future. For SATA M.2 drives on this adapter the card has no electronics to fail. It also can't possibly transfer faster for SATA M.2 drives than what your motherboard SATA ports can do.

 

[Happy Hopping]

wow, I totally missed that. I didn't see the SATA cable needed on the PCI E Card. So let''s forget about the idea of m.2 SSD on PCIE card then.

But on the same subject of 6X faster, if I put 1 or 2 m.2 SSD, by that I mean Intel 540p SSD (not the 600 series as I only want to stick to Win 7) on to the m.2 slot of this motherboard

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P10S-WS/

would these m.2 ssd be faster than a SATA SSD on this same motherboard then?

 

[Staples]

I bought a cheap one like the one pictured above. I see that one costs $47 at newegg. Mine way $7 shipped from China.

 

[MixManSC]

It greatly depends on the m.2 SSD.... they can be traditional SATA, AHCI over PCIE (this also breaks down into two version x2 and x4), or NVMe. Then it also depends on the board and how the m.2 slot is wired. An m.2 connector on a mobo can be wired several ways with support for different devices, the BIOS and even your operating system will also affect what is and is not supported on the m.2 connection (which can also have a few different length cards supported). Simply dropping an m.2 PCIE card into a PCIE slot also has the same limitations. It will depend on what the mobo BIOS (there are a very few mobos with a bridge chip to) supports as well as how the PCIE card is configured. Some might have a controller chip, some might have a bridge chip, some might be just pass through of the PCIE lanes.

The Dell card I have that came in my dell has 4 m.2 slots and is designed for NVMe SSD's. There is no bridge chip on the card, the mobo has a bridge chip.

Google for types of m.2 SSD'd and you will find plenty of articles that really go into the details that you will need to know in order to make sure you know what you might be getting.

The card shown above will not be any faster than any other SATA SSD. The sole purpose of the card is to provide an m.2 connector and power. It does not use the PCIE bus in any way other than to provide power. That style is SATA pass through. An m.2 SATA ssd is the only type that will work on that.

 

[Eric1285]

I use a $5 PCIe adapter from eBay to run my Samsung 950 Pro as my boot drive on an old X58 system. Very rarely (maybe once every 3 months) I'll power on the system and it won't boot - everything powers on, but the system fails to initialize. Hitting the reset button has worked to get the system booting every single time. Not sure if it's the adapter's fault or just some minor bug. Other than that, no issues with my adapter.

 

[Happy Hopping]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...cm_re=m.2_pcie_adapter-_-15-256-024-_-Product

so forget that garbage startech card. The above Silverstone card doesn't has that SATA adapter, it says it support "Support Length of M.2 SSD: 30mm, 42mm, 60mm, 80mm" so is it fair to say it does NOT has to be a NVMe drive? Can the Intel M.2 540S SSD, which is 80 mm, can fit the above card?

 

[LigTasm]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...cm_re=m.2_pcie_adapter-_-15-256-024-_-Product

so forget that garbage startech card. The above Silverstone card doesn't has that SATA adapter, it says it support "Support Length of M.2 SSD: 30mm, 42mm, 60mm, 80mm" so is it fair to say it does NOT has to be a NVMe drive? Can the Intel M.2 540S SSD, which is 80 mm, can fit the above card?

Okay, you've got a lot of terms getting thrown around here so I will try to help you get everything straight.

-m.2 is a form factor, much like 2.5" or 3.5" drives, or the old mSATA. It is also known as NGFF or "next gen form factor". Drive can come in varying lengths which is where you will see 2280. 22 denotes the width and 80 denotes the length. Also included in the m.2 spec is the height of components, etc.

-m.2 drives come in two specific flavors, SATA and PCI-E. SATA drives retain the old ~600MB/s read while the PCI-E can be up to 2500+MB/s.

-PCI-E drives also come in multiple flavors, 2.0 x2/x4, 3.0 x2/x4/x8

- NVMe is a storage interface protocol and has nothing to do with the connector on the drive. Connectors are PCI-E or SATA, period. People keep calling PCI-E drives NVMe for some reason, but that is not accurate.

- PCI-E drives come in multiple interface protocols, NVMe is the current most popular, however just a little bit ago they use AHCI just like SATA drives (Samsung SM951 for example) and can perform differently depending on the workload.

Now, to the silverstone card you linked, it says this: "Module Key: PCI-E x4-based M key". The "key" is literally just that, the contacts on the drive have a slot much like a RAM stick to help you orient it. PCI-E drive are generally M-key while SATA drives are B-key. Some m.2 sockets can handle one or the other, some both. It depends on how it is wired. That being said, the silverstone one will NOT work with a SATA drive, it is M-key only and specifies PCI-E which means only PCI-E drives will work.

Here is a picture of the keys, top is an m.2 PCI-E drive with M-key, bottom is m.2 SATA drive with B-Key.

Hopefully this helps.

 

[Happy Hopping]

very well said. I know some of the above fact, but not all of them.

All I really want is, I can't stand win 10. So I'm stuck w/ the Intel 540S series SSD. And naturally I want the fastest speed. Which is why I keep digging for this guy:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...67383&cm_re=intel_540s-_-20-167-383-_-Product

and hope that there is an adapter card that can read it.

Now, I believe you are off on 1 thing: the bottom photo, is called the B+M key, as such, the following confusion comes in:

I bought a handful of the above Intel 540S that is B+M key, and they work very well with this motherboard:

http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-B150N-GSM-rev-10#sp

eventhough the specification of the motherboard says:

http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-B150N-GSM-rev-10#sp

1 x M.2 connector on the back of the motherboard (Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280 SATA and PCIe x4/x2/x1 SSD support)

So by installing quite a few Intel 540S w/ B+M key, it doesn't mean that a motherboard that says M key does not work. In fact, it accepts the 540S b+M key and run well w/ win 7.

Having said the above, we are going in circle, you said the Silverstone that says it support M key only, " it is M-key only and specifies PCI-E which means only PCI-E drives will work."

but knowing the Intel B+M key can support by motherboard like Gigabyte eventhough it ALSO says M key, can we use the same interruption and assume these Intel 540S can be read by the Silverstone?

 

[LigTasm]

So by installing quite a few Intel 540S w/ B+M key, it doesn't mean that a motherboard that says M key does not work. In fact, it accepts the 540S b+M key and run well w/ win 7.

Having said the above, we are going in circle, you said the Silverstone that says it support M key only, " it is M-key only and specifies PCI-E which means only PCI-E drives will work."

but knowing the Intel B+M key can support by motherboard like Gigabyte eventhough it ALSO says M key, can we use the same interruption and assume these Intel 540S can be read by the Silverstone?

I left out the B+M key because all existing drives have the M-key (B-key only doesn't seem to exist although its in the spec). If you want to get really technical they all interface over PCI-E but boards that can do SATA connect it to the chipset which swaps it over to the SATA bus. Thinking about it more, you might be able to run the Silverstone adapter provided that you have a PCI-E slot that connects directly to the chipset, but I couldn't be sure of that. It may not detect it correctly with the adapter.

Again, I'm not sure where the adapter case comes in the first place, why not just use a 2.5" to m.2 SATA adapter? I use two of them, its just a little 2.5" case that the m.2 drive plugs into. You aren't going to get any faster plugging it into a PCI-E card, its simply impossible.

Also, you don't need to use Windows 10 for a PCI-E m.2 drive. I run Windows 7 on my 950 Pro just fine. If you wanted the maximum speed possible that would be the best route.

 

[MixManSC]

Agreed...... even if you get an NVMe drive you can run and even boot from one with Windows 7 x64. That is what I am doing on this Dell. BUT - and its a big but, to boot from an NVMe drive will require specific motherboard support. Otherwise you could still use the drive but only as a secondary drive (would not be able to boot from it). This is specific to NVMe though.

Like Lig said though - because the 540S is a native SATA drive there is nothing you can do to make it go faster than SATA speeds. The only way you will get more speed (since you say you have multiple) would be to put something together to make them RAID. For example if your mobo has onboard RAID for its SATA ports then get an adapter like Lig mentioned and connect one to each SATA port and make them a RAID 0 set in the RAID configuration for the mobo.

 

[Happy Hopping]

thank you everyone, in the end, this table explains it all, I wish I see this table sooner

https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/solid-state-drives/consumer-family.html

If I run a 3rd or 2nd drive and make it a PCIe Gen 3 x 4 on a INtel 600p, some of you said the performance is not really at 1800MB/s. But I don't trust other brand, especially samsung. So in the end, my next SSD, I'll go back to the 2.5" SSD

 

[LigTasm]

Glad you got it solved. To be honest, the SSD's are all so fast today just get what you like and feel comfortable with.

 

[MixManSC]

.......... But I don't trust other brand, especially samsung. ..........

"especially samsung"

???? Something wrong with Samsung SSD's? They are practically one of the most popular and reliable SSD's out there. Sure - a couple of years ago they did have that slowdown issue with the 840 EVO ones but they eventually worked out a fix for that. Intel has had plenty of problems with theirs too - the 8mb bug a few years back on some models, the DevSleep problem on the 530/535, even way back on the first old 80gb ones they had (I still have one of those running in one system) had a serious bug. They did firmware updates to fix them.

I know the first really avaiable NVMe SSD'd were the OEM only Samsung SM951 series. Those came in a lot of OEM machines - including this Dell Precision T7910 I'm using now. I've had probably over a dozen Samsung SSD's and not a single issue with any of them.

Just saying..... and just curious why you say "especially samsung" is all.

 

[Happy Hopping]

everything from samsung fails. Their phone caught on fire, their washing machine explodes, their hard drive dies fast, their LCD monitor, I bought 2 x 30" at $1500 ea., I got 5 dead in 2 years, in the end, they have to refund both 30". And on top of that, if you do a search on their SSD, it collapses, a 1 TB SSD down to like 300 MB w/ all data gone. Do a search at this forum. (it's just like the Intel 8 MB bug)

 

[Happy Hopping]

Update:

after a month, I found this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...71&cm_re=syba_m.2_card-_-15-124-171-_-Product

It definitely support SATA based M.2, I just don't know how relliable that Marvel 9235 controller is

 

[MixManSC]

The Marvell 9235 does not support raid in any way. It is an AHCI SATA controller only - an NVME ssd will not work. Your motherboards build in raid will not be able to see or use its ports. That chip is also only PCIe 2.0. A quick peek on the Marvell site also reveals that they do not have a storage controller for anything NVME. So if you are looking to use NVME SSD's just skip anything with Marvell.

One of the reviews on Newegg did report some pretty decent speed though hitting upwards of 1000mb/s. So not too shabby for using with SATA based SSD's. I've used Marvell stuff in the past without any issues myself but I know their controllers are generally not consider top of the line by any means. I'd think any problems would be immediate and probably if it works fine out of the box then it will probably be fine for the long run.

One that will be interesting is coming from Highpoint.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/CS-product_nvme.htm

Their new SSD7100 series should be coming out soon. Those look very promising.

 

[Happy Hopping]

IN that case, that Marvel would be perfect for me, as I'm still using win 7 and has no intention to move to win 10. So I'm stuck w/ SATA M.2 SSD

w/ PCIe 2.0, and SATA at a speed of 560 MB/s, I figure we still haven't exceed the max. bandwidth of PCI E 2.0

 

[MixManSC]

No in your scenario it should work great. Without double checking I think the slot itself can support up to 5gb/s so you still have plenty of headroom. With the one review on newegg reporting getting close to 1000mb/s that is still blowing an onboard sata port out of the water and by any measure some darn nice speeds to be hitting for storage. Plus in real world usage the difference between this in the lastest nvme setups is hardly noticeable. Sure they are amazing in benchmarks but most people dont just sit around running benchmarks all day.

 

[Happy Hopping]

There are magazines report that even said Optane SSD has very little difference as well.