M.2 questions...

[PsycoGeek]

I'm looking at a new motherboard from ASRock, E3C236D2I, that gives the following info: (SATA0 share with M.2 connector).

Does that mean you can have an M.2 drive and SATA0 connected at the same time, or is one or the other?

Also, can you boot from and M.2 drive?

Thanks,
PG

 

[Hanakuso]

Sounds like SATA0 shares the same "PCIe lane" with the M.2. So it's one or the other.

I don't know about which M.2 drive you're buying but yes it's possible to boot from M.2. IMO, it seems so complicated and confusing on M.2 sizes, compatibility, etc.

 

[Blue Fox]

You won't be able to use both concurrently. It's one or the other. It will be bootable as it essentially is just another SATA port in a different form factor (at least on that board).

 

[PsycoGeek]

That's what I though. The board is new and they don't have a download for the manual, otherwise I probably could have answered that myself.

The board looks like it takes a pretty short M.2 card Hanakuso. I was only asking because getting a small 2.5" SSD for the boot drive looks like it won't be happening. This is for a FreeNAS build, so it doesn't even need 60GB. 32 will be more than enough. And yeah, I know you can use a USB flash drive to boot and run from, but they can go bad (and do so a lot more frequently than SSD's).

 

[zaniix]

This should fit.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6232K11288&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-KB%20Networks,%20Inc.-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10440897&PID=3891137&SID=rewrite

 

[yippy3000]

Now that they have the manual up, it looks like if you can find a short enough PCI Express based M.2 SSD you can use it without losing the SATA port. I really hope this is the case.

Now, they just need to ship the board, I still can't find anywhere to buy it.

 

[Dan_D]

Z170X motherboards share PCI-Express lanes with the SATA Express ports. Since those SATA Express ports are backwards compatible with SATA devices, use of an M.2 drive disables some of the SATA ports.