this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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My mind forgot that M.2 is probably more prevalent these days and that they’re not just shutting down for no reason.
Is it though? Pretty much every single current-gen mainboard still comes with a number of SATA ports.
Most people have one drive. Everything else is cloud based now. It's horrible 😭
collapsed inline media
Omg I didn't even mean OneDrive but I guess that's still accurate since windows is dominant on home PCs
I've got 4 drives and better upgrade while I can.
Ever seen a Chromebook? Almost no drive space, because Google.
Everyone is going to buy M.2 SSDs first, and only buy SATA if they don't have enough M.2 slots. I really doubt SATA SSDs are selling well.
With that said, I don't see SATA going anywhere. It's (comparatively low) bandwidth means you can throw a few ports on your board and not sacrifice much. For some quick math: a M.2 port back-hauled by PCIe 4.0 x4 has 7.8 GB/s of data lines going to it. While SATA 6.0 has only 0.75 GB/s of data lines going to it.
SATA is really convenient for larger storage, though. I keep my OS on nvmes, but I've got a couple of SATA drive and a hot swap bay for games, media, etc.
I'm still running SATA spinny disks for my big-ish data. I can't afford a 16TB SSD...
I know that's off topic, but HDDs are still a thing too.
I'm very excited for the day I can replace my spinners with SSDs. That day is coming, but it is not today.
Right‽ I don't think anyone expected spinners to outlast SATA SSDs!
They have become expensive too IMO, a 3-4 TB drive costs more today than a couple of years ago, and the used market here in europe is insane.
Here I am, I have like 3 or 4 m.2 drives but like 15 or something SATA drives
And how many motherboards have the same amount of m.2 slots as they do sata slots? And what generation? So now I need new ram which is inflated to high hell, a new motherboard and cpu to increase storage on my gaming rig? Its not like games are small these days I like to keep most games i have installed and that takes multiple terabytes of storage that is cheaper to do via sata ssds.... this is clearly anti consumer and done purely to push people to newer systems in the hope people stay with windows instead of swapping to linux. Its being done to keep the ai bubble going...
They are going to have less m.2 slots as they require a ton more data lanes. If you do need another m.2 slot, a PCIe adapter card or a SATA adapter are both good options.
Even then, NVMe riser cards are a thing to just stick an NVMe drive in a spare PCIe slot.
Does require you to have the PCIe lanes for it, BIOS support for booting to PCIe (which Intel 6th gen core CPUs were the first to support. 4th gen never did but some had m.2 slots and NVMe support for secondary drives and the 5th gen X99s had some receive BIOS updates to support but that's its own can of worms) and both Intel and AMD have historically been pretty bad about being stingy about PCIe lane availability
Plus to run more than a single NVMe on a single slot your motherboard either needs to support PCIe bifurcation which is almost exclusively an enterprise feature or they need to have the right lane configuration available to support that x16 slot handing out 4x4 lanes (or 2x8/2x4 for dual NVMe)
Y'know what, I honestly haven't looked at what the PCIe lane layout is like on newer chipsets. Maybe it's gotten better since I last really paid attention like 5+ years ago. I remember in early-mid AM4 there was a lot of grumbling about how there's only 20 PCIe 3 lanes followed by early PCIe 4 platforms that would give only 16-20 lanes with another 8 or so PCI 3 lanes. I also didn't really pay much attention to AMD before AM4 given how far behind Intel they were. But I could be entirely out of date now that I think about it
Phoenix2 APUs like the R3 8300G and R5 8500G are the worst offenders in the 'cutting PCIe lanes' department.
The R5 8500G only has 14 lanes, for example. The FX-8350 and 8370 from a decade earlier, would've had 32 lanes available on the 990FX chipset, and half that on the 990X and 970 chipsets per contemporary reviews from when those CPUs were new, but they were all PCIe 2 as AM3+ was a PCIe 2 platform.
This is the specific review I'm going off of for this. FX-8350 review
Per that review, 990FX would've supported 2 x16 or 4 x8 slots, while 990X would've supported 2 x8 slots, and 970 would've only supported a single x16 slot, but of course configs varied by the board makers, and there would've been nothing stopping someone from making a 990FX board with a single x16 slot, three x4 slots, and two x2 slots, for example, nor a 990X board with a single x16 slot or a 970 board with a single x8 slot and two x4 slots.
I have one m.2 and multiple sata ssd, since on my motherboard occupying the second m.2 slot would drop the pcie lane for my GPU due to sharing bandwidth.
Do newer boards not have that problem?
Higher spec boards dont have this issue; Typically an issue with low and mid range boards due to cost savings.
Which just also shows why this is a very anti consumer move. Its trying to artifically push people to by new hardware because there hasn't been significant enough changes to really warrant it. This then means more people who might have swapped off of windows to keep their existing hardware might end up having to upgrade then stick with their familiar windows platform so that the ai bubble can continue. Its completely fucked up
Yeah, but I think SATA is quickly being relegated to large mechanical storage drives. For things that don't require performance, like storage and what have.. because SATA is not getting any faster, I doubt anyones gonna come out with a SATA IV standard at this point, when PCIE over M2 is easier, simpler, and faster, and.. outside of silicon shortage stupidities, getting cheaper and more affordable.
Comes with them, but only for legacy media. Outside of my NAS I haven’t bought a new sata drive in probably 10 years. And I haven’t touched my onboard sata ports in 5.
The fact that they’re still there impresses me at this point. But their numbers are slowly dwindling. Sata is usually the first thing that gets dropped when you need more pcie lanes. And even then most boards only have 4 at this point. They’re switching back to those god awful vertical ports which tells you all you need to know about their priority.
Most people at least put their OS on M2. I guess if you haven't upgraded since M2 became common on motherboards you might not.
Edit: I internet says M2 was common around 2016 2017 motherboards.
SATA is not intended for fast storage devices but bulk storage, at this point.
Guess it’s time to get some m.2 to SATA adapters
I would be surprised if m2 has overtaken regular sata connections for the majority of computers produced for businesses and individuals, but maybe they don't make enough in that area.
They definitely have. The smaller form factor is better for laptops, and if you can share parts between laptop and desktop it's cheaper.