Using an M.2 drive on an old motherboard

[Skylarr]

Hello, I'm trying to move away from using Hard Drives as my boot media, and I feel like my Hard Drive is finally dying, a WD Raptor from 2009-2011 or something. I have an extra m.2 drive laying around but I'm not sure if I can use it or not. I don't have any kind of m.2 slot since this motherboard is LGA 1366 (Why am I using this still xD). I was considering something like a Sata III to M.2 solution, but wanted to come here first to ask if you guys have any recommendations on what I should do, or if there are any cheap and good M.2 to Sata III adapter boards.

My motherboard is an Intel DX58SO CPU I7-920
My SSD is a WD Blue M.2 2280. It's a sata drive I'm pretty sure.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Is your M.2 device a SATA or PCI NVME M.2 drive? M.2 is only the form factor, not the specification.

If you use an M.2 SATA device, or if you were somehow able to adapt that M.2 (If it's is PCI) to the SATA header, you'd just end up with SATA speeds and wouldn't gain anything. You 'd actually probably lose performance in the transition. Pretty sure that's not possible though.

Conversely, if that is a SATA M.2 drive and you used a PCI add in card adapter, you'd still be stuck with SATA speeds.

The only way to gain PCI M.2 speed and performance is to use your NVME drive with an M.2 header that supports PCI M.2 or a PCI slot adapter add in card that does.

Knowing what the exact model of your M.2 device would help, but the bottom line is anyhow, if your motherboard does not have M.2 drive support, then it also almost certainly doesn't have baked in support from booting from an M.2 device that has been adapted to fit a PCI slot card or SATA header, again, if that were even a thing, which I'm pretty sure it is not. I've never heard of it anyhow.

So if you got a PCI adapter card that would accept your M.2 drive, which DOES exist, it still would be unlikely to allow it to be a boot device. You can check into that with your motherboard manufacturer, but it's probably not possible. Maybe, but doubtful.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Model name of M.2 drive? This is quite important btw.
If it is sata M.2 drive, then you can use M.2 to sata adapter.
If it is NVME M.2 drive, then you can use M.2 to PCIE adapter, but you may not necessary be able to boot from it on your pc.

 

[jaslion]

Hello, I'm trying to move away from using Hard Drives as my boot media, and I feel like my Hard Drive is finally dying, a WD Raptor from 2009-2011 or something. I have an extra m.2 drive laying around but I'm not sure if I can use it or not. I don't have any kind of m.2 slot since this motherboard is LGA 1366 (Why am I using this still xD). I was considering something like a Sata III to M.2 solution, but wanted to come here first to ask if you guys have any recommendations on what I should do, or if there are any cheap and good M.2 to Sata III adapter boards.

My motherboard is an Intel DX58SO CPU I7-920

There is sata M.2 and nvme M.2.

If you get a sata M.2 ssd you can use a M.2 to sata adapter but that doesn't make sense at all since you can just get a sata drive for much cheaper and still get the same speeds without having to use an adapter.

If you want to use a nvme drive you'll have to get a pcie adapter for it but since you are using LGA1366 you will not be able to boot from it since this board is from before the time m.2 nvme drives went mainstream.

Either way going m.2 on a board that does not support it is you just spending extra money for a drive that will either run at the same speeds as a normal sata ssd or you using a drive you can't even boot from (or in the worst case not even see due to incompatibility issues with pcie storage).

 

[SkyNetRising]

It makes sense, if you already have the M.2 drive and want to use it.
M.2 to sata adapter is not that expensive. Cheapest ~6eur.
M.2 to PCIE adapter is a bit more expensive. Cheapest ~10eur.

 

[Darkbreeze]

But worth noting, even though it's been mentioned at least twice now, is the fact that if it's a PCI M.2 drive and your motherboard is not new enough that it has M.2 slots on it, there is a very good chance it is not going to support booting from PCI devices. Some do, a lot don't.

And a few got support through later bios updates as well. Mostly though, I think if it does not natively support M.2 it will be a crapshoot as to whether it's going to support your PCI adapter because most boards with PCI boot support are new enough that they at least have a SATA M.2 slot, if not a PCI M.2 slot.

Since there WERE some PCI storage devices before M.2 got popular, obviously there will be some boards that don't have those but DO support booting from PCI devices, so you'll have to investigate that.

Actually, I do not think that your Intel DX58SO supports booting from PCI devices, from the technical documentation I just looked at. I could be wrong though.