m-PCIe SSD do the job?

badbiddy · 13 May 2015 at 13:16

I've just bought an MSI B85 ITX motherboard with a G3220 as the heart of my new home server. I have a case I bought from an auction site with 4 hot-swapable HDD mounts.

All looks nice.

However, I need a 5th drive for the OS. My motherboard only has 4 SATA ports.

According to MSI website, it has:

• 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot
• 1 x Half-size mini-PCIe slot

This gives me options, but I don't want to spend a fortune. If I can find a decent solution that gives me 32GB of storage for the OS then that will be plenty.

I have a 60GB Vertex2 I've just taken out of my main machine, so one option is to just get a SATA PCIE controller and plug that in.

TBH I'm almost considering booting from USB3 but it strikes me as far from ideal.

Justintime · 13 May 2015 at 15:33

mini-PCIe does not mean its M-Sata compatiable. Does it specifically say that?

badbiddy · 15 May 2015 at 12:51

No it does not...

What kind of things are meant to go in mini PCI-e slots ?

Justintime · 15 May 2015 at 15:07

badbiddy said:
No it does not...

What kind of things are meant to go in mini PCI-e slots ?

Wifi cards, USB 3 controllers etc.. are made in mPCIE format which is found in laptops mostly. mSATA needs a SATA controller built in and is different. Not 100% sure but i did hear of a mPCIE SSD with the SATA controller built in but could never seem to find it.