SATA Drive<\/h3>\n
A SATA SSD has the same form factor as a standard hard drive and uses a SATA cable to connect to the motherboard.<\/p>\n
These SSDs commonly come in the 2.5-inch form factor (the size of a laptop\u2019s hard drive).<\/p>\n
The latest SATA SSDs use the SATA revision 3.0 interface, which has a maximum transfer speed of 600MB\/s.<\/p>\n
These drives are relatively cheap compared to other form factors and are commonly found in professional laptops and mid-range desktop PCs.<\/p>\n
![\"SSD](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/SSD-on-laptop.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
M.2 Module<\/h3>\n
The M.2 (formerly NGFF) SSD form factor was developed to provide support for SATA and PCIe interfaces.<\/p>\n
M.2 SSDs are long, thin PCBs with multiple NAND Flash modules, and connect via an M.2 connector to an M.2 slot on the motherboard.<\/p>\n
There are several types of interfaces and controllers used by M.2 SSDs, mainly:<\/p>\n
- \n
- SATA<\/li>\n
- PCIe<\/li>\n
- NVMe<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
M.2 SATA drives do not look like conventional SATA drives and connect to an M.2 port, but use the same interface and are also limited by the 600MB\/s cap.<\/p>\n
M.2 PCIe SSDs use the PCI Express lanes exposed via an\u00a0M.2 slot to connect to the computer and provide increased performance.<\/p>\n
![\"Corsair](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Corsair-M2-SSD-connected-to-motherboard.jpg\")
<\/a>Corsair M.2 SSD connected to motherboard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n M.2 PCIe SSDs can use two different controllers: AHCI and NVMe.<\/p>\n
AHCI PCIe SSDs provide backward compatibility for systems with SATA support, but have limited efficiency due to AHCI being designed for mechanical drives.<\/p>\n
NVMe PCIe SSDs have vastly superior performance, as the interface was designed for high-speed flash storage.<\/p>\n
M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs can boast transfer speeds many times that of conventional SSDs and feature thousands of processing queues instead of the single queue provided by older interfaces.<\/p>\n
![\"WD](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/WD-Black-SSD.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPCIe Card<\/h3>\n
The final form factor is the dedicated PCIe card.<\/p>\n
These SSD\u2019s are large, single-slot storage drives which connect to a PCI Express slot on your motherboard \u2013 similar to a graphics card.<\/p>\n
Dedicated cards\u00a0use the NVMe interface and usually include heat sinks to dissipate heat.<\/p>\n
These devices can usually only fit in desktop PCs and are used in workstations or enterprise systems.<\/p>\n
The development of smaller NVMe SSDs\u00a0and the increasing popularity of the M.2 form factor have negated the need for the average consumer to purchase a dedicated PCIe SSD card.<\/p>\n
![\"SSD](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/SSD-PCIe-Card.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis article first appeared on MyBroadband<\/a><\/strong> and is republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n
Now read:\u00a0WD launches SSDs in South Africa \u2013 Pricing and details<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SSDs\u00a0appear in a multiple form factors, from 2.5-inch SATA drives to RAM-like M.2 modules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":117293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[24629,16188,19625,23242,2101],"class_list":["post-118533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-m-2","tag-nvme","tag-pcie","tag-sata","tag-ssd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}