Storage Solutions Laptop Mobo says SATA only, but slot seems to be keyed for NVMe drives

[DentFuse]

So my laptop's ssd randomly went kaput. No warning signs. Had a bsod once with UNEXPECTED _STORE_EXCEPTION, rebooted and ran chkdsk and sfc, no issues found. Crashes again within 10min, aaaaand the ssd was gone from BIOS.

So I opened up the laptop and noticed that the m.2 was keyed for a NVMe drive, however the silk screen says to only use SATA ssds. Attached a pic for reference. So which one should I get?

On a sidenote, can someone recommend a good sata ssd? Brands on Amazon seem to be WD, EVM and Silicon Power out of which i only "trust" WD.

 

[rsaeon]

It's a common technique to reduce maybe a sliver of a percentage in component inventory costs since a B+M keyed device will slot into a M keyed slot.

These slots can have PCIe lanes, or SATA lanes or both. Looks like yours is SATA only from the silk screening.

 

[enthusiast29]

Brands on Amazon seem to be WD, EVM and Silicon Power out of which i only "trust" WD.

SP is decent brand that you can go for. I would avoid WD greens at all costs, very cheap quality and I've seen failures with two of my friends who bought it despite me telling them to avoid the green labeled shit.
I was a nice "I told you so" moment.

 

[calvin1719]

onlyssd.com is often cheaper than Amazon by the way. And it's very reputed.

Get whatever type the old one is.

 

[rockyo27]

It's a common technique to reduce maybe a sliver of a percentage in component inventory costs since a B+M keyed device will slot into a M keyed slot.

These slots can have PCIe lanes, or SATA lanes or both. Looks like yours is SATA only from the silk screening.

Yes, it may be M key but will work at sata speeds only....u may get nvme drive as right now both m2 sata and nvme drives are somewhat similarly priced.

 

[calvin1719]

Sorry if I'm mistaken, but from what I know if the slot is sata only, nvme will not be recognised. Is this not the case?

 

[rockyo27]

It is M key it should get recognized but speeds will be aata only afaik

 

[rsaeon]

Sorry if I'm mistaken, but from what I know if the slot is sata only, nvme will not be recognised. Is this not the case?

Yeah, that's how it is — this practice of using a M keyed slot for SATA only devices happened very early on, back during the 6th gen days when it was called NGFF instead of m.2

It's basically a hack/cost cutting measure for the manufacturer to use a single part for both NVMe and SATA based storage, depending on what is supported by the chipset.

It is M key it should get recognized but speeds will be aata only afaik

The slot wouldn't have any PCIe lanes for NVMe devices to be recognized. I learned this hard way, I have a nice mini-itx board with an NGFF slot for storage but even though it's M keyed, it only recognizes SATA devices:

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[rockyo27]

The slot wouldn't have any PCIe lanes for NVMe devices to be recognized. I learned this hard way, I have a nice mini-itx board with an NGFF slot for storage but even though it's M keyed, it only recognizes SATA devices:

That is right i guess....if it is having only sata lanes then nvme won't work without any adapter i guess.