Question Do m.2 drives with dual notches always run in SATA mode only?

[PingSpike]

Here's a super cheap example one with the B and M notches.

Pardon Our Interruption...

My understanding is that if I stuck this in a m.2 to pcie straight adapter, its not going to work because it's just a sata SSD in m.2 form and therefore has no built in drive controller. Only the single notch m.2's will work like this.

I think some motherboard m.2 slots can switch back and forth but I'm only interested in nvme devices. I shopping for one anyway and think I need to steer clear of the dual slot devices.

Is that true?

 

[Billy Tallis]

M.2 SSDs with two notches can be either SATA or PCIe x2. There aren't a lot of PCIe x2 SSDs on the retail market, and they're all quite low-end. The exception are the Optane Memory modules, which have pretty good performance given the constraints of PCIe 3.0 x2, but the capacities top out at 118GB. The 16GB modules are pretty cheap on eBay.