When we talk about M.2 we are really referring to a very compact and small type of card, 22mm wide. Today we associate them with high-performance SSD drives, but they have other utilities such as the ability to add WiFi and Bluetooth to a motherboard that does not have them. However, there is one type that seems to have completely disappeared from the map, the one with the SSD M.2 SATA
We usually associate the M.2 form factor with a high speed PCI Express connection, however there are drives that connect to SATA interfaces with the ability to transfer up to 6 Gbits per second. These do not differ in performance from 2.5-inch drives, but they have the handicap of having less memory space and DRAMLess versions cannot be made either due to the fact that said interface, unlike PCIe, does not have direct access to the RAM memory of the system. However, there are plenty of laptops and motherboards that are a few years old that support these types of drives.
What happened to M.2 SATA SSDs?
If we look at the news and developments of the last couple of years it seems that the world of solid state drives is divided into 2.5-inch ones with SATA interface and the ability to bring more memory chips inside and fast M SSDs. .2 with PCI Express interface at breakneck speeds that promise to change the way we play games in the future, although to be honest, we’re starting to get impatient and we’d rather it be a present.
The fact is that not all M.2 interfaces are the same and if your computer is old enough you may find that its pins have a strange arrangement or that your newly purchased NVMe SSD does not make a connection. If that is the case, then you need an M.2 SATA SSD, however, getting one can be an odyssey today and there are fewer and fewer units available for a very simple fact, they are no longer manufactured and the reasons of it are very simple to understand.
What happens when you have a product that inherits the worst of both worlds? That is, the lower storage capacity due to the little space on the PCB of an M.2 and the higher latency and lower bandwidth of the SATA interface. Well, you have a product that happens to be the worst option of all. What’s more, today all CPUs usually have a PCIe interface with enough pins, not only for the graphics card, but also for at least one NVMe drive.
What are the best options?
In the event that your PC has a connection for this type of storage unit and you need more gigabytes to save data and programs, we are going to give you two models as a purchase advice. One of 1 TB of the Western Digital brand and for narrower pockets and as a second option one of 512 GB of the Intenso brand
