m2 sata, what's what?

I have run out of drive bays in my poor little air 240 case and want to make it a dual boot rig with win10 and a Linux disrto that I need to run software that eats lots and lots of space and really likes to have three drives, two for scratch.
the motherboard is an asrock z97E ITX/AC with a monster quadro card that will be doing the compute work so no pcie slot disks can be installed, I only have the one slot.
on the back of the board is an sata m.2 connector, the manual says I can use a 2230 or 2242 spec drive there, but very few drives are listed by the 22xx spec, they just seem to leave this info out.
the connector on the board is for the three spade connector, 2 narrow spades, one on each side and a wider one in the middle.
what is the dive called that I am looking for, m.2 doesn't work, there are two and here are pics to prove it, these are both m.2.........

M.2 ngff with 2x keys appears to be the type needed, xx32/42 refer to the length (so that rules out xx80, the longest, at least). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2#Form_factors_and_keying

But:

** The M.2 Socket, SATA3_4, SATA3_5 and SATA Express share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

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The second one is not M2, it is mSATA. Disregard, M2 is just a really stupid connection.

thideras said:

The second one is not M2, it is mSATA.

Click to expand...

Or is it an M2 with a single keying, M only?

well, satrow has shown that this is not the box to do this with, I'll have to see what's left in my extreme 9 board.
when I shop the interwebs, what do I search for to so I don't get the second connector? when I search "m.2" I get both.

satrow said:

Or is it an M2 with a single keying, M only?

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This.

It looks like you need keying like your upper image but in the shorter versions (upper image looks like xx80 - 80mm long).

"M.2 ngff" might be a good start point for searches - but trust nothing, check everything.

on M.2 the keying would be different for the two types of connections it supports. the sata that winds up using one port on the board so you would lose one drive on the sata ports. then their is the NVE drives that use the pcie lanes for sending data, they also cost more then sata based m.2 drives. the biggest tell is the bw as to which one uses what.

the first picture is of a drive that uses the sata connection and the second being a drive that uses the NVE (ie pcie lanes) connection.

M.2 SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147397
M.2 NVE
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K3JZ9116

pulled from the asrock spec page for that board

- 1 x M.2_SSD (NGFF) Socket 3, supports M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen2 x2 (10 Gb/s)

The M.2 Socket, SATA3_4, SATA3_5 and SATA Express share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

that m.2 slot is on the back of the board, i had to make sure my self i figured it would have taken a 80mm drive but you are right they have to be smaller. the problem is smaller length drives tend to be the sata ssd's and dont very large in size i think at most 256mb but im looking through newegg right now. im finding alot of ssd's in 2242 from companies i havent heard about they are sata connection.

depending on how fast i can get through this list on newegg, i will edit this post. here is a link if you want to look as well:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&PageSize=30
some of the drives have the size listed the 2242 is more common then i thought.

after narrowing it down agian based on size
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...nd&ActiveSearchResult=True&PageSize=30&Page=1
there are a few 2242 in 256gb sizes but nothing bigger then that in that small of a format.

i was doing more digging for you just to make sure, since the intel 750 allows the use of both u.2 and m.2 connections. i got lucky to pick up the intel 750 400gb from the classies and the m.2 adapter is full 80mm not 42mm. i can not find a u.2 to m.2 or m.2 to intels connection on the 750 for a 42mm length. as i think it would have been a good fit for you had they had the adpaters in a smaller length. im kinda out of ideas for ya other then putting in a sata/sas card for more ports...



*edit*
just thought of something, if you dont mind using that MPCIE slot you could get one of these.
http://www.miniinthebox.com/0-05m-0...8OibdqmgLjoyxnHllNhzA9aE5kF3wcPaR2xoCzzzw_wcB

though on the picture it is hard to judge how much room is there to support a 2280 M.2 ssd. just eyeballing it looks like a 42mm might be the most agian.

having done some reading and searching I have found what seems to me to be mass confusion within this type of drive.
you have
m.2 sata
m.2 pcie
ultra m.2.

reading on the software venders site, I need only three drives for the software, 1 drive for the operating system and software, 1 scratch drive and 1 data storage drive.
I am staring to think that m.2 should be avoided unless you just can not fit another drive in the case.
in my situation I have an asrock extreme 9 board with a 4790K in the socket sitting on the shelf with a total of 10 sata ports.
I'll just find a small case and power supply that will take 4 ssd's and one big spinner that can be shared with both operating systems.

after laying the other board, drives and cables out on a table and a little searching the software venders forums I found that I can do it with fewer drives and use the air 240 and the board that is in it and have come up with this and it avoids m.2.

have you thought about one of these?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100011693 600521290
using it as either your scratch disc or what ever else, i dont know what options you have to you. im curious though why you think M.2 should be avoided?

it just looks like the m.2 connecter has a confused standard to me, or maybe I have simply confused myself.
I would love to be able to use one of the pcie slot drives but the board has only one pcie slot and that will be filled with the gpu.

caddi daddi said:

it just looks like the m.2 connecter has a confused standard to me, or maybe I have simply confused myself.
I would love to be able to use one of the pcie slot drives but the board has only one pcie slot and that will be filled with the gpu.

Click to expand...

M.2 is just a slot. Nothing any more confusing about it than PCIE slots. On your board, M.2 and SATA Express are sharing ports, so if you're already using the SATA ports (but not SATA Express), you could probably add a PCIe M.2 drive (assuming you have spare PCIe lanes). If you're not using the SATA Express ports at all and don't have spare PCIe lanes, get an M.2 SATA drive.

it appears that either connecter can be pcie or sata.
m.2 describes the form factor or size of the drive.
two other things I need to go look up are nvme and m.2 ultra that I have seen listed with a couple of drives.