Anyone have experience with mini PCIE sata cards

[razaldo]

I am planning on using one of these in my laptop - it will replace wireless adapter in my laptop.

 

Wanted to check if anyone has used this and what is your feedback?

 

More importantly, will this work in the laptop?

 

Attached image of: XCSOURCE Mini PCI-E PCI Express to 2-Port SATA

[unknownmiscreant]

9 minutes ago, razaldo said:

I am planning on using one of these in my laptop - it will replace wireless adapter in my laptop.

 

Wanted to check if anyone has used this and what is your feedback?

 

More importantly, will this work in the laptop?

 

Attached image of: XCSOURCE Mini PCI-E PCI Express to 2-Port SATA

Be careful with those, not all mPCIe slots are created equal. 

 

All look the same, and have the same physical connections, however the electrical connections can vary:

There are standard mPCIe slots that are found in most laptops for wireless cards etc. these have a single lane of PCIe and usb connections. These slots will not work with that card.

There are mSATA slots, these have the SATA signal lines connected directly to the SATA controller. These slots will work with that card.

There are combo slots which are the best of both worlds. Everything will work.

 

Sadly, the PICe/USB only slots are the most common.

 

I would recommend googling to see if anyone has had any luck with mSATA drives in your laptop, as that will tell you whether the mPCIe slots support SATA traffic. I know for certain mine does not support them. Internet threads all agree on that, and since I had a mSATA drive lying around, I decided to test it. It didn't work . However my Dad's laptop supports mSATA drives, and there is alot of success reports on the net.

 

Also for us to help you effectively, we need the exact model of the laptop.

[razaldo]

3 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Also for us to help you effectively, we need the exact model of the laptop.

Thanks for that informative reply, never thought that mPCIE slots would be different!

 

The laptop I have is an old LG R480

[razaldo]

6 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

All look the same, and have the same physical connections, however the electrical connections can vary:

There are standard mPCIe slots that are found in most laptops for wireless cards etc. these have a single lane of PCIe and usb connections. These slots will not work with that card.

There are mSATA slots, these have the SATA signal lines connected directly to the SATA controller. These slots will work with that card.

There are combo slots which are the best of both worlds. Everything will work.

 

Is it possible to check through the Windows device manager if the mPCIE slot is single lane or otherwise?

[unknownmiscreant]

Just now, razaldo said:

Is it possible to check through the Windows device manager if the mPCIE slot is single lane or otherwise?

All are single lane PCIe. You can use HWinfo to track them down though.

 

3 minutes ago, razaldo said:

Thanks for that informative reply, never thought that mPCIE slots would be different!

 

The laptop I have is an old LG R480

Ikr, it took me ages to compile that list of info. I thought they would all be the same initially as well.

[Droidbot]

10 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Be careful with those, not all mPCIe slots are created equal. 

 

All look the same, and have the same physical connections, however the electrical connections can vary:

There are standard mPCIe slots that are found in most laptops for wireless cards etc. these have a single lane of PCIe and usb connections. These slots will not work with that card.

There are mSATA slots, these have the SATA signal lines connected directly to the SATA controller. These slots will work with that card.

There are combo slots which are the best of both worlds. Everything will work.

 

Sadly, the PICe/USB only slots are the most common.

 

I would recommend googling to see if anyone has had any luck with mSATA drives in your laptop, as that will tell you whether the mPCIe slots support SATA traffic. I know for certain mine does not support them. Internet threads all agree on that, and since I had a mSATA drive lying around, I decided to test it. It didn't work . However my Dad's laptop supports mSATA drives, and there is alot of success reports on the net.

 

Also for us to help you effectively, we need the exact model of the laptop.

Uhhh, this isn't for mSATA, it goes in a normal mPCIe slot and converts that to two SATA ports, similar to a HBA. 

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, Droidbot said:

Uhhh, this isn't for mSATA, it goes in a normal mPCIe slot and converts that to two SATA ports, similar to a HBA. 

Actually, it might work as there is an asmedia chip on the back. Idk, be careful, I wouldn't buy it unless you find some pretty definitive evidence of it working in a laptop that does not support mSATA drives.

[razaldo]

55 minutes ago, unknownmiscreant said:

Actually, it might work as there is an asmedia chip on the back. Idk, be careful, I wouldn't buy it unless you find some pretty definitive evidence of it working in a laptop that does not support mSATA drives.

Worst case scenario - what is the worst that can happen if it does not work?

 

Will it conk off the laptop / hard drive / cause a nuclear reaction?

 

Just so that I can gauge if is worth the risk. Else I have the option of using a caddy in place of the CD Rom slot and using a hard disk there.

[AshleyAshes]

The most likely hurdle you'll hit, if you do, is BIOS support of expansion cards.  Laptop BIOSs often arn't very well supported since there's few scenarios where they'll get upgrades beyond an SSD, RAM or a wifi card swapped out.

As an example, I'm building a Desktop using laptop parts, including an ITX motherboard with a mobile/laptop chipset in it.  The manual lists SATA, USB and graphics cards it won't work with and that list is six years old.  It wouldn't POST with certian graphics cards as an example.  I had to contact customer support to get a newer BIOS version that wasn't published on their site so as to improve compatibility.  And this was for an industrial ITX board, a real laptop would see fewer updates since, well, they really don't care if you're trying to frankenstein a full fat GPU or a SATA controller into your slot only intended for Wifi.

[unknownmiscreant]

3 minutes ago, razaldo said:

Worst case scenario - what is the worst that can happen if it does not work?

 

Will it conk off the laptop / hard drive / cause a nuclear reaction?

 

Just so that I can gauge if is worth the risk. Else I have the option of using a caddy in place of the CD Rom slot and using a hard disk there.

It won't break the laptop, the only bad thing that will happen is you waste some money.

Although I personally would go for the caddy option. who needs cds nowadays?

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

The most likely hurdle you'll hit, if you do, is BIOS support of expansion cards.  Laptop BIOSs often arn't very well supported since there's few scenarios where they'll get upgrades beyond an SSD, RAM or a wifi card swapped out.

As an example, I'm building a Desktop using laptop parts, including an ITX motherboard with a mobile/laptop chipset in it.  The manual lists SATA, USB and graphics cards it won't work with and that list is six years old.  It wouldn't POST with certian graphics cards as an example.  I had to contact customer support to get a newer BIOS version that wasn't published on their site so as to improve compatibility.  And this was for an industrial ITX board, a real laptop would see fewer updates since, well, they really don't care if you're trying to frankenstein a full fat GPU or a SATA controller into your slot only intended for Wifi.

I had an eGPU working off express card on my laptop (1x PCIe 2.0 lane.) The connector not making very good constant caused a few startup issues, but no instabilities once it windows was running.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, unknownmiscreant said:

I had an eGPU working off express card on my laptop (1x PCIe 2.0 lane.) The connector not making very good constant caused a few startup issues, but no instabilities once it windows was running.

I'm not saying it WON'T work, I'm saying there can be incompatibilities.  Just because one expansion card worked doesn't mean the other will is all I'm saying.  As an example, a Radeon HD 4850 and HD 7950 were fine, a Radeon R9 390X however refused to POST until the unpublished BIOS update was flashed onto the ITX Mobile board I'm playing with.  Issues were reported some some RAID and HBA cards as well.  This is because it's not uncommon for the BIOSs in laptops to not have their support focus on expansion cards because, well, why would they?  AT the least, since my board is built for industrial applications, there was a support infrastructure, but a laptop's support infrastructure isn't going to focus any resources on supporting external expansion cards via the mPCIe slot if issues arise.

[unknownmiscreant]

5 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I'm not saying it WON'T work, I'm saying there can be incompatibilities.  Just because one expansion card worked doesn't mean the other will is all I'm saying.  As an example, a Radeon HD 4850 and HD 7950 were fine, a Radeon R9 390X however refused to POST until the unpublished BIOS update was flashed onto the ITX Mobile board I'm playing with.  Issues were reported some some RAID and HBA cards as well.  This is because it's not uncommon for the BIOSs in laptops to not have their support focus on expansion cards because, well, why would they?  AT the least, since my board is built for industrial applications, there was a support infrastructure, but a laptop's support infrastructure isn't going to focus any resources on supporting external expansion cards via the mPCIe slot if issues arise.

Yeah, welcome to OEM machines.

[razaldo]

I think then I will take the caddy route.

 

Since we did a little segue to eGPUs - I was using one in the express card slot with a Lenovo Thinkpad X240t. Funny thing was that due to the bios, it would work only when there was 2GB of RAM installed. Anything higher than 2GB and the PCIE for the express card would not get any resources allocated.