M.2 vs sata drives

[Aidan Hughes]

So, I've been looking at some m.2 drives as I thought they were the fastest drives out there but after having a look it looks like m.2 and sata drives proform the same it looks to me like the benifits of m.2 is low power and small from factor which I don't care about is this right or am I missing something?

 

[Paul NZ]

PCI-E / NVME would be faster but the BIOS on your system would have to support it first. If you want to boot from one

 

[Suztera]

M.2 is just the connector. What interface a M.2 drive would be either sata or pcie that will determine what bandwidth it can have.
A M.2 sata ssd is limited to sata speeds.
A M.2 pcie ssd can be capable of up to 32 Gbps depending what pcie lanes it uses.

 

[Rookie_MIB]

^x2 - exactly correct. The M.2 is a physical connector, how it's connected electrically on the drive is what makes it fast. They have the following formats:

SATA based. Has a sata based controller on the drive. Uses SATA protocols and is limited to SATA speeds. (500-550MB/sec).
PCIe x2. Uses PCIe lanes for a maximum of about 1200-1400MB/sec and uses the NVME protocol (1.2-1.4GB/sec).
PCIe x4. Uses PCIe lanes for a max of about 3200MB-3400MB/sec and uses the NVME protocol (3.2-3.4GB/sec).

Note that this is how it is wired on the drive, not the motherboard. Most M.2 sockets on the motherboard will support both SATA and PCIe, and will autodetect the type on boot. You'd have to read the documentation to find out for sure.