M.2 SATA III to PCIe slot

[Jvill40]

Hey I've been having trouble getting my computer to recognize a new SATA III M.2 SSD. The motherboard I have is the MSI Z170A SLI Plus which has a M.2 slot that is listed as 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen3 x4) in the specifications. The M.2 card that I have is a Team Group MS30 M.2 2280 512GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) TM8PS7512G0C101. From my research and numerous attempts in tweaking BIOS settings to recognize the device, is it true that I will need an adapter to get the SSD and MOBO to work together properly? Something like this https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-2-5in-Adapter-Converter-SAT32M225/dp/B00ITJ7U20 that will convert the PCIe port to a SATA port? Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Potatocell]

does it show in the BISO but not window? if so you want to go in disk manager and if it says the drive is "unallocated" you want to right click it and click "new simple volume" then follow the wizard that will pop up

I had to do this with my ADATA SSD a few years back

[Oshino Shinobu]

You cannot use the M.2 slot with that SSD. The slot is PCIe only, it cannot use the SATA communication protocol. 

 

That adaptor should work though. It basically converts the M.2 connector from the SSD to standard SATA power and data. It doesn't convert the PCIe M.2 on the board though. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Potatocell said:

does it show in the BISO but not window? if so you want to go in disk manager and if it says the drive is "unallocated" you want to right click it and click "new simple volume" 

I had to do this with my ADATA SSD a few years back

No, the M.2 on the board and the SSD are incompatible. 

[Jvill40]

4 minutes ago, Potatocell said:

does it show in the BISO but not window? if so you want to go in disk manager and if it says the drive is "unallocated" you want to right click it and click "new simple volume" then follow the wizard that will pop up

I had to do this with my ADATA SSD a few years back

It doesn't show it in the disk manager at all. I think the other comments are correct that it just isn't compatible and I would need to use the adapter. Thank you for your reply!

[Kisai]

20 minutes ago, Jvill40 said:

Hey I've been having trouble getting my computer to recognize a new SATA III M.2 SSD. The motherboard I have is the MSI Z170A SLI Plus which has a M.2 slot that is listed as 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen3 x4) in the specifications. The M.2 card that I have is a Team Group MS30 M.2 2280 512GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) TM8PS7512G0C101. From my research and numerous attempts in tweaking BIOS settings to recognize the device, is it true that I will need an adapter to get the SSD and MOBO to work together properly? Something like this https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-2-5in-Adapter-Converter-SAT32M225/dp/B00ITJ7U20 that will convert the PCIe port to a SATA port? Thanks for any help you can provide!

Check the manual. Some M2 slots are keyed M and work only as PCIe, and some are SATA.

 

For that board:

So the answer to that is, no. It doesn't.

 

You'll need to find a PCIe card that has the SATA connector hanging off the end to use a SATA M2. By which it will just be using the SATA port on the MB in the first place.

 

Also that adapter is another solution but wastes more space. So if you don't have a drive bay for it, PCIe card.