Two m.2 drives ?

[jamesd1981]

Hi all

I currently have a crucial m.2 drive installed for my Windows installation with an hdd for storage.

I would like to add a 2nd m.2 drive for file storage and I am just wondering if this will in anyway affect the speed of the main os drive, both drives are pci-e gen 3 with os drive in the main pci-e 3.0 x 4 slot and the new files drive would be in the x 2 slot ?

Thanks James

 

[beers]

x2 would limit your transfer rate to somewhere around 2 GB/s. It shouldn't impact your main drive as the x2 slot goes through the chipset and the x4 slot has PCIE lanes directly to the CPU. You might have to sacrifice a couple of SATA ports to use it however, but I haven't thoroughly read the manual for that board.

You might be able to find a better deal on a higher capacity SATA drive just for bulk storage, but it's up to you.

 

[jamesd1981]

x2 would limit your transfer rate to somewhere around 2 GB/s. It shouldn't impact your main drive as the x2 slot goes through the chipset and the x4 slot has PCIE lanes directly to the CPU. You might have to sacrifice a couple of SATA ports to use it however, but I haven't thoroughly read the manual for that board.

You might be able to find a better deal on a higher capacity SATA drive just for bulk storage, but it's up to you.

Thanks beers, I knew the storage drive wouldn`t run full speed due to the second m.2 port being x2, as long as it doesn`t drag down my os drive plugged in the main x4 slot.

The sata ports should not be an issue, I am still deciding between removing all sata drives or leaving my main 2tb hdd for more storage.