Connecting M.2 drives to various things (and not doing so)
6 comments
·August 25, 2025kube-system
It would be kind of an awkward to adapt a new and fast NVME drive to a clunky old SATA controller. M.2 conversions would typically not have the physical space required for any active conversion circuitry, and it would be more expensive than buying a SATA drive. If you've got a full 2.5" bay, you can get native 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs up to 16TB... which is more than I want to read/write at SATA3 speeds. And if you want to take advantage of fast storage, you can just skip the whole SATA controller and use PCIE.
In an enterprise environment, nobody is really hooking up fast new storage to old slow storage controllers. They are either maintaining old systems, where they will use the legacy storage technologies, or they are deploying entirely new systems.
privatelypublic
I think You're looking for something called a "tri-mode HBA." They run about $200 on ebay and as you mentioned- the m.2 to u.2, u.3, etc is passive (minus power)
rmb938
That's not really a M.2 nvme to sata converter though. That's just something that can take pci-e lanes and either give them to nvme drives through a pci-e multiplexer or convert the pci-e lanes to saas or sata. It also isn't passive, there's lots of processors to make it happen.
null
yummypaint
You could do this on an FPGA dev board with the right connectors. Might be a nice project for someone with the time
> there also doesn't currently seem to be any high capacity M.2 SATA SSDs
I have a high capacity M.2 SATA in my computer. It's 4TB which I think qualifies for high. I bought it because I found out about that empty slot in my computer and wanted to fill it, not because of a particular need. Having a rare part in my computer gives me an indescribable sense of joy. And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies.