question on the m.2 slot

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jordan12

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so if i bought an m.2 card, can i boot off of this and would that free up one of my sata ports for another storage drive?
 
jordan12 said:
Any disavantages to using one as your boot device?
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Just make sure you get one that's compatible as a boot drive with your particular motherboard. Seems that some will only boot from SATA-based M.2, and others only from PCIe-based M.2 drives. Unless you're incredibly adventurous, I highly recommend buying an M.2 that's listed as compatible on the QVL for your board (sometimes none are even tested), or one that's been proven by other users to both physically fit and work as a boot drive for your particular board and OS.

In theory, M.2 seems really great.. but right now, there are just way too many different M.2 variations, which is making it difficult for the consumer to actually purchase the correct one for their motherboard.

Midway through this post is a good overview, that might be helpful and/or discouraging..

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040821271&postcount=1
 
jordan12 said:
so if i bought an m.2 card, can i boot off of this and would that free up one of my sata ports for another storage drive?
Click to expand...

There are different types of M.2 drives. If it is a SATA M.2, it will most probably share a SATA port with a SATA connector. Check your board manual to see how it is wired.
 
I have the Asrock Z97 Extreme 6. It really doesnt say if it will work or not.

I put in a trouble ticket to them. Hopefully they will respond..
 
jordan12 said:
I have the Asrock Z97 Extreme 6. It really doesnt say if it will work or not.
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On their product page, they show speeds as tested on a Samsung XP941 PCIe M.2, so it might be a safe bet to go with one of those (though I know on that particular drive, some folks were able to use it as a boot drive on the ASUS Impact VII, while others couldn't for some reason).

Their M.2 vendor list says it'll work, though..

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z97%20Extreme6/?cat=M2SSD

Samsung 512GB PCIe x4 2280 XP941-512G (MZHPU512HCGL)

Unfortunately, it's a $500 drive.. but the only 4x PCIx that they've tested.
 
If you have the Z97 Extreme 6, the Samsung XP941 is the only drive to get at this time. More options should be available in the next 60 days.
 
jordan12 said:
so if i bought an m.2 card, can i boot off of this and would that free up one of my sata ports for another storage drive?
Click to expand...

You can boot off of most of them, but not all boards will boot on all options, and not all boards support all M2 drives (e.g. PCIE). The most recent boards should mostly (if not ALL) support PCIE, but not all will boot from the XP941.

On many boards the SATA portion of the M2 slot is shared with one of the normal SATA ports, so you don't gain an extra port - you just use it in a different form factor. It will free up space in the case, though.

If you hold off for an NVME drive, keep in mind that not all OS can boot that. Not sure if you'd be able to boot it in a non-NVME mode or if you would need to boot (bootloader - not necessarily entire OS) off a different drive (or upgrade to an OS that can boot NVME). There are third-party NVME drivers for Win7 but I haven't tried them.
 
I purchased the Plextor 128GB M.2 drive and it boots fine on my board (Asus MG7).
 
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