M.2 drive to pcie or sata

[Jakobsson]

Im build a pc with parts I already have at home, and the motherboard im planing to use doesnt support a m.2 drive and thats all I have, so should I buy a m.2 to pcie adapter or m.2 to sata adapter for my build?

[da na]

Well is it a M.2 SATA or NVMe drive? SATA drives have two notches, one on either side, NVMe drives only have one notch. 

[SquintyG33Rs]

you can only use one of those two. they are fully exclusive. either your m.2 drive is sata or it's pcie and only that adapter will work with it

[will0hlep]

If the drives are nvme something like this will work

EZDIY-FAB PCI Express M.2 SSD NGFF PCIe Card to PCIe 3.0 x 4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 22110,2280, 2260, 2242)

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/EZDIY-FAB-Express-Adapter-Support-22110/dp/B075TF6HFM/ref=asc_df_B075TF6HFM/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310762440393&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18546361444796813&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006886&hvtargid=pla-587168356302&psc=1

[Jakobsson]

The drive is a Kingston NV2 Gen 4 M.2 SSD 2TB if that makes a differens

[SquintyG33Rs]

also side note I just remembered. if you're using a motherboard that doesn't have m.2 it's probably older than 2015. before Z97 (on intel) and Ryzen booting from a PCIe storage device is absolutely not supported on consumer platforms. so even with an adapter you couldn't have windows on that drive, it will still work once you are in OS.

[YoungBlade]

26 minutes ago, Jakobsson said:

The drive is a Kingston NV2 Gen 4 M.2 SSD 2TB if that makes a differens

It makes a big difference. That is an NVMe drive, which means it is not compatible with SATA adapters.

 

As @SquintyG33Rs mentioned, you aren't likely to be able to boot off of an NVMe drive on a board that doesn't have a slot for it.

 

You could still use the NVMe drive as a secondary drive with a PCIe adapter card, but you'll need a different drive to be the boot drive. That said, you can get some really cheap 256GB SATA SSDs these days. You could use one for Windows, and then have your 2TB NVMe as a drive for games and applications with the adapter.

[kokosnh]

2 hours ago, da na said:

Well is it a M.2 SATA or NVMe drive? SATA drives have two notches, one on either side, NVMe drives only have one notch. 

this is so wrong on several levels. 

M.2 keys only tell you the max PCIe lanes, the M one have max 4 PCIe lanes, the B or B + M one have max 2 PCIe lanes, and that is all. 
And they all can have SATA lanes. 

There's absolutely nothing more to the M.2 key M, key B or key B + M, in the M.2 SSD. And just talking about notches count, without specifying the keys is also misleading. 
 

We have M.2 AHCI SSD using SATA lanes in key B and B + M
We have M.2 AHCI SSD using PCIe lanes (SATAexpress) in key M
We have M.2 NVMe SSD using PCIe lanes in key M and B + M

@JakobssonJust tell us the CPU and motherboard you are using, and if you have anything free to use, like PCIe slots, that aren't under GPU for example.