M.2 Drives are easily the most confusing thing I have come across in recent history. There are PCIE versions, Sata versions, versions which are the size of a stick of gun, some that offer no distinguishable performance over standard 2.5'' SSDs, and some that appear to be 2.5'' SSDs but use an adapter to a PCIE lane, AFAIK. This is very confusing, convoluted, and it is not a help when trying to decide which one to use. To further complicate matters, there are varying versions of each of these. What is the difference between the 850 evo and 850 evo pro and 950 evo ? What is an NVME drive? Which are the best to buy in todays markets as a boot drive? Which provides the best read/write speed for standard users?
Can we talk about m.2 SSDs? They are confusing.
- Thread starter czglory
- Start date
I agree wholeheartedly. I made the fatal error of buying a M.2 SSD chip thinking I could install it in my Mac Pro. Then, of course, I had to buy a host controller board and, again thinking it should work, I bought a board that claimed compatibility with Apple OS X. It didn't or wasn't. I found reports from people claiming they had achieved success with this or that M.2 chip, NVMe or AHCI or PDFF or whatever. But they all seemed to be outliers-people who knew enough to potchke around in the code and make slight changes in the system to make the card or the chip readable.
There are two or three pieces of solid information that emerged from about two weeks of trying to get something to work with the Apple OS : (1) there are a couple of companies making adapter boards for Macs, upon which can be mounted full-size 2.5 SSDs, viz: OWC and Apricorn. There may be others, but not many. And neither of those companies makes boards yet for M.2-style flash chips for desktop Macs (OWC makes one for laptops). (2) No NVMe chip will work in a Mac as an NVMe device, because Mac runs its own incompatible version of NVMe. Will Apple ever recognize standard NVMe? Why should it? Can you run an NVMe chip on the same dual board as an AHCI chip? Who knows? Good luck getting answers to any questions like that. Nobody actually KNOWS anything. All I could get was lines like: "Well, it SHOULD work." Right. It's all jive, as far as I'm concerned. I'm in the process of sending all those stupid purchases back for refunds. I'm no longer interested in M.2 chips. All I really wanted was a PCIe-mountable SSD because I'd run out of drive bays. To the devil with flash-SSDs. They were apparently originally developed for laptops, mostly Windows laptops, and the Windows users are welcome to them. I'm sure I've made a lot of irritating generalizations in this rant; anyone who can authoritatively correct anything in it, please do so. If there are more companies specializing in Mac adapter boards, tell us about them. As for me, I'm out of the market.
There are two or three pieces of solid information that emerged from about two weeks of trying to get something to work with the Apple OS : (1) there are a couple of companies making adapter boards for Macs, upon which can be mounted full-size 2.5 SSDs, viz: OWC and Apricorn. There may be others, but not many. And neither of those companies makes boards yet for M.2-style flash chips for desktop Macs (OWC makes one for laptops). (2) No NVMe chip will work in a Mac as an NVMe device, because Mac runs its own incompatible version of NVMe. Will Apple ever recognize standard NVMe? Why should it? Can you run an NVMe chip on the same dual board as an AHCI chip? Who knows? Good luck getting answers to any questions like that. Nobody actually KNOWS anything. All I could get was lines like: "Well, it SHOULD work." Right. It's all jive, as far as I'm concerned. I'm in the process of sending all those stupid purchases back for refunds. I'm no longer interested in M.2 chips. All I really wanted was a PCIe-mountable SSD because I'd run out of drive bays. To the devil with flash-SSDs. They were apparently originally developed for laptops, mostly Windows laptops, and the Windows users are welcome to them. I'm sure I've made a lot of irritating generalizations in this rant; anyone who can authoritatively correct anything in it, please do so. If there are more companies specializing in Mac adapter boards, tell us about them. As for me, I'm out of the market.
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