Hello everyone, today I gonna try to explain the difference between Hard Drive and
2.5-inch SSD, NVMe and M.2 SATA and mSATA.

The difference in these drives is in different types of connections to the laptop or PC motherboard.
If you compare the 2.5-inch hard drive and the SSD with the same 2.5-inch form factor,
you will see that the connection interface is the same SATA type.

That is, if you would like to exchange your old disk drive with a quick SSD drive, there’ll be
no problems, because the SATA interface is compatible with another type of connection – SATA
1, SATA 2 or SATA 3.

But unfortunately, you can’t install an M.2 SSD in a socket of a SATA hard drive – it
is physically impossible.
You also cannot install an M.2 SSD in a socket of the mSATA, these drives, as you can see,
also have different connection sockets.

With a tough drive and an SSD with a 2.5-inch form factor, everything is sort of simple and
just as without any problems you can replace an mSATA because this type of drive is available
only in one form factor and with one type of connection.

We still have M.2 SSD with different sizes, with different bus types, with different keys,
and from this many of us have confusion – “what type of  M.2 SSD should I buy when upgrading
my computer” Ok.

Let’s talk about M.2 SSD has different sizes; there are only
four of them: 2230, 2242, 2260, and the most popular 2280.
The first two numbers indicate the width of the board; the second two numbers are the length.
As a rule, it is indicated how long the M.2 motherboard supports.
Now let’s turn to the types of M.2 drive.

M.2 storage is often in SATA and NVMe types – So what’s the difference between M.2 SATA
and M.2 NVMe

SATA M.2 SSD and a couple of .5-inch SSD – have equivalent specifications.
M.2 NVMe works on the PCI-E bus, and these are completely different indicators in speed,
which is much higher than the SATA bus.

– to elucidate very briefly, NVMe may be a sort of bus that works much faster than a SATA bus
For example, modern motherboards use SATA III with a maximum speed of 600 MB/s.
NVMe drive provides write accelerates to 3500 MB/s.
This is 7 times more than SATA!

Yes, these two boards are very similar in appearance but have a small difference in
the connection socket.
As a rule, an M.2 SATA supports 2 keys “M”+“B”
The M.2 NVMe drive working on the PCI-E bus will have only one “M” key.
What does this all mean, I show with example?
M2 SATA board with the M + B key can be installed in most slots, while the M2 NVMe with the
“M” key is physically impossible to install in the “B” slot, so pay attention to which
slot installed on your computer motherboard.
How it all looks in practice.
Take, for instance, the Asus Prime Z270P motherboard that has an M.2 socket under the key “M”
onboard, which suggests that you simply can install the M2 SATA SSD … as you see, nothing interferes
with the connection … you’ll also install M2 NVMe SSD – also the connection doesn’t
interfere.

But here the question may arise whether the M.2 NVMe is going to be compatible together with your laptop.
For example, an Asus X570 laptop auto-detects which type of M.2 SSD is connected, and in
most modern laptops, the BIOS auto-detects the drive.
Many manufacturers install on the motherboard slot for M.2 with the key “M” and with the
support of the bus to settle on – SATA or PCIe.
That is, you buy M.2 SATA or M2 NVMe and any of the drives will work.
But there are cases when the motherboard works only on one of two buses and does not support,
for example, the new NVMe standard or the old SATA.
To make sure that your motherboard is compatible with the SSD M2 drive, I will show an example
with one of the motherboards from Asus.

Enter the BIOS, then in the Advanced section and find the line “M.2 Configuration”,
then within the menu, you’ll see that the motherboard supports SATA and PCIe buses,
and therefore M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe will work on such a motherboard.
But it’s also worth considering that such a setting might not be in your BIOS, but at
the same time, your laptop or PC will detect and work with both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe.
Therefore, first read the specification of your laptop or motherboard, before buying
an M.2 SSD storage.

What to try to do if you purchased M.2 SATA but didn’t check the presence of the M.2 socket on the
motherboard and your laptop only support 2.5 SATA standards.
In this case, there is a quite large choice of different adapters.
For these adapters, I leave a link within the description where you’ll buy them.
Such an adapter allows you to attach an M.2 SATA and make it a typical 2.5-inch SSD storage.
But if you are trying to attach an M.2 NVMe drive to such an adapter, you’ll not succeed because
the connector is not compatible.

There are also adapters for the mSATA storage that make the 2.5 SATA standard out of it.
Even for the 2230 M.2 SATA standard, there’s the adapter that converts M.2 SATA to mSATA
… after which you can connect to the adapter again and make 2.5 SATA