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> M.2 NVMe adapt

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M.2 adapter for storage

I’m considering building a small-factor NAS-like server based on an ASRock J4125-ITX board in a fourbay tower. I need to keep the PCI-e slot free for a TV tuner card, and want to use all four onboard SATA ports for storage, so I was wondering if I can run the OS from a NVMe drive plugged into the M.2 (Key E) slot?

—Martin Bilton

THE DOCTOR RESPONDS: The short answer is yes. There are numerous adapters that can convert the Key E slot into one for plugging in both SATA and NVMe drives. If all you need is extra storage, search eBay for ‘M.2 key A+E male’ to add two SATA ports via a $10-15 adapter. The Doc recently fitted one with a JMB58x controller to replace a PCIe SATA adapter, and it works perfectly.

You specifically talk about booting from an NVMe drive, and the Doc can also confirm that this is possible, having seen one working. Despite the fact that the Key E slot runs at PCIe 2.0, meaning you won’t get anywhere near NVMe’s theoretical top speed of around 3Gbps, you should be able to eke out better performance from it than with a standard SATA SSD drive.

Turn a redundant M2 E-key slot into extra storage ports.

© MOTIONEYE

Given that NVMe adapters (see www.ebay.com/ itm/393229097064 for one example) cost around the same as the SATA adapter, your only consideration at this point is whether there’s enough space in the case to accommodate the NVMe drive itself, which has to be mounted vertically.