what happened to sata m.2 drives

WARburton · Tuesday at 17:26

I looking for a cheap storage dump drive without running sata cables and messing up the aesthetics of my build.
i seam to remember sata m.2's was cheap a hell now i cant find any really.

wanting 2-4tb, what the best cheap option

edit lol just fond loads.. and they cost more than nvme..

Snapshot · Wednesday at 06:58

What is the point of SATA M.2 for most people? It doesn't perform as well as NVMe and it can block SATA ports for those that want to use them as well. There's little demand for them and the manufacturers understandably concentrate on NVMe.

WARburton · Wednesday at 07:02

i just thought they would be cheaper if been used for for a file dump.

tamzzy · Wednesday at 07:51

Does anyone still buy new sata m.2 drives?
Most/all new mobos support nvme, why settle for inferior tech

WARburton · Wednesday at 08:11

For the same reason they still buy spinning disk drives

alec · Wednesday at 09:17

QLC nvme got so cheap that SATA lost its cost advantage. And then QLC nvme got so unpopular there are barely any new drives. Now we have neither

tamzzy · Wednesday at 10:16

WARburton said:
For the same reason they still buy spinning disk drives

well i daresay that spinning rust still holds a significant cost advantage per GB than SSDs, so there is an argument if using it for mass storage
whereas for m.2 sata and m.2 nvme there really isn't any, except if using a really old mobo that doesn't support nvme.
there may be a generation or two of motherboards (i can't think of any off the top of my head though) that didn't have msata but had m.2 sata, but by and large, the vast majority of boards that had m.2 will have support for nvme

WARburton · Wednesday at 10:38

yer i think ill just have to gram an nvme one

dave28 · Wednesday at 10:46

They got completely outclassed by Nvme and are dead tech.

They used to cost over £1000 for a 1TB but nobody wants them now.

hornetstinger · Wednesday at 10:48

tamzzy said:
well i daresay that spinning rust still holds a significant cost advantage per GB than SSDs, so there is an argument if using it for mass storage
whereas for m.2 sata and m.2 nvme there really isn't any, except if using a really old mobo that doesn't support nvme.
there may be a generation or two of motherboards (i can't think of any off the top of my head though) that didn't have msata but had m.2 sata, but by and large, the vast majority of boards that had m.2 will have support for nvme

You don't boot up Windows 11 from data punch cards?

Punched card - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

My motherboard has four SATA ports, so I could use them for 2.5" SSD or 3.5" platter drives.

If 2.5" SSD were much cheaper than nvme it could be economical option as pretty sure SATA 3 is plenty fast enough for loading games

Minstadave · Wednesday at 11:07

SATA M2 was popular for a short while for laptops but both desktop and laptops moved to NVME meaning NVME production is much higher volume with greater economy of scale so they're cheaper for a superior product.

Tetras · Wednesday at 13:48

WARburton said:
i seam to remember sata m.2's was cheap a hell now i cant find any really.

Just as well, because almost all modern motherboards have dropped SATA support on their M.2 slots!

WARburton said:
wanting 2-4tb, what the best cheap option

The prices are changing constantly, so it is really hard to give a blanket recommendation with SSDs.

Snapshot · Wednesday at 18:34

WARburton said:
For the same reason they still buy spinning disk drives

No, people buy HDDs because they need much larger capacities than are available with consumer NVMe. That was never the case for SATA M.2.

WARburton · Wednesday at 21:22

Snapshot said:
No, people buy HDDs because they need much larger capacities than are available with consumer NVMe. That was never the case for SATA M.2.

i wouldn't call a 61.44tb nvme drive small?
the still the most used sata drive is 2tb

Snapshot · Thursday at 09:32

WARburton said:
i wouldn't call a 61.44tb nvme drive small?
the still the most used sata drive is 2tb

And I wouldn't call it 'consumer'.

WARburton · Thursday at 11:12

WARburton said:
For the same reason they still buy spinning disk drives

Snapshot said:
And I wouldn't call it 'consumer'.

CuriousTomCat · Thursday at 15:23

On some motherboards, the 2nd or 3rd M.2 port shares lanes with the 2nd PCIe slot. So on systems with 2 GPUs that need to operate at full speed, multiple M.2 NVMe drives will take valuable PCIe lanes away from the 2nd PCI slot. An M.2 SATA drive in this scenario would solve that problem because the PCIe slots will have the full 16x lanes.