StarTech.com M2 PCIe SSD Adapter - x4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe / AHCI / NGFF / M-Key - Low Profile and Full Profile - SSD PCIe M.2 Adapter , TAA (PEX4M2E1)

I used this to hook up two external SATA drive enclosures to my new computer. The card fit perfectly in my computer. I installed it and plugged in my drives and started up my machine. I then installed the latest driver from the startech.com site (nice site, BTW). Some of my drives were not recognized. I had to go into Windows Disk Management, where they were listed as Foreign Disks. Once they were "imported" Windows read the disks just fine.Everything seemed to work fine. But then, after working on the computer for about 15 minutes, got a blue screen of death. The error shown as DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. After rebooting, got another BSOD, and another, and another. Every 15 minutes or so. This on a brand new computer.So I figured it must have something to do with the card since that was the only thing I had changed about the computer. I decided to walk it backwards one step at a time. I didn't want to uninstall the whole thing and start all over. So I went to the driver in Device Manger and just disabled it, then rebooted. Hmm, no more BSOD! What happens if I re-enable the driver now. Will the BSOD come back? It did not. So it seems like disable/enable the driver solved the issue.In retrospect, I should have installed the card, turned on the computer, installed the driver, then reboot. Then, shut down the computer, hook up the drives, and turn the computer on. I did these two steps as one. I highly recommend that you take it one small step at a time. Easier to sleuth problems that way. Other than that, this card has worked perfectly.

I have this low power Mini ITX mobo with 4 SATA ports on it. All of them are in use on the FreeNAS. I was using the suggested setup of mirrored USB drives. 2 little Sandisk Cruisers. After about a year one of them failed. I replaced it then a few months later the other one failed. I don't think they are bad devices, they just aren't rated for 24/7 use.Anyway I needed another solution. I had a single PCI-e slot to work with. I picked up some cheapo M.2 "controller" not realizing it needed SATA cables to work. Oops. So I did some more digging and found this. I didn't need the speed of NVMe. I mean this system was running off 2 USB sticks just fine. Given how cheap SATA controllers are I felt this was a little expensive. I mean I could get a 2 port PCIe SATA controller for like $12 USD. Anyway I've worked with StarTech stuff before and it's always seemed to be good quality. After some reading it looked like the controller chip on this would be happy to play with FreeNAS.I installed this 32GB Trancend SATA M.2 drive, installed the card in the machine and re-installed FreeNAS. Imported my 2 mirrored arrays, tweaked some settings, let it reboot like 6 times as I changed things and it did it's import process, make sure all my imported settings worked, then shut it down, installed the other M.2 drive, booted back up, setup the boot drive mirror and boom, perfection. No more USD drives hanging out of the back and it works great.Final thoughts. I think for the money, it's worth it. There are more expensive solutions out there but the instructions are great and it seems well made. I waited 4 months before I wrote this review. Card length is a consideration as well. My FreeNAS machine is in a Fractal Design Node 304. The case itself has room, But there are a lot of power supply and SATA cables running around in there. It was a little tight.Warning: Some BIOS's don't like to boot off PCIe devices. Try and do some research before buying this. If you happen to have a cheapo PCIe SATA controller laying around. Put a bootable drive on it, even a CD-ROM/DVD and see if it boots. Generally if you're in the BIOS and you can see it as a boot option, you're golden. All that said, if you're reading this review and considering buying one of these, you probably know what you're doing.Hope this was helpful.

Was easy to install, no fuss or muss. Accepted my drive without issue. Games install and load VERY quickly. Probably the single biggest upgrade to my computer since 1994 when I bought a 1MB Trident VESA card for Doom.

Device works as expected. Plug and Play with Windows 11 (MSI motherboard / AM4 CPU). Makes for a good option for dual boot, especially if the Motherboard only has 1 NVMe slot from years ago.

I bought this (2) x SATA M.2 + (1) X NMVe M.2 SSD adapter/controller card and have been very pleased. I bought this to use in a Dell PowerEdge T320 server. My use case is probably a bit different than most. I was switching my main Hypervisor install/boot drive from SD card (Dell ISDM) to SSD -- for performance and reliability reasons. I wanted to utilize the onboard SATA connectors to connect SSDs to, however, I didn't want 6-inches of SATA power adapters, a poorly fitting 2.5" cage or 2.5" SSDs sitting somewhere they shouldn't be.I love the thought of the Dell BOSS (Boot-Optimized Storage Solution) cards, but that's only validated and available on 14th Gen and up Dell. I am running a pretty old 12th Gen PowerEdge.Nice thing is that for SATA M.2 drives, this adapter polls power from the PCIe port. When no NMVe/PCIe SSD is installed in the adapter card, this card is completely transparent to the host/workstation -- which is significant for some servers where PCIe lanes or bus priority is a concern. I populated the adapter card with (2) x 256GB SATA SSDs, connected two SATA cables from the card to the Onboard SATA ports and installed the card in an unused slot.Works flawlessly. Very neat and no spaghetti. I am very pleased with this. The two SATA M.2 drives showed up as any SSD to the Onboard PERC S110 RAID controller. I created a RAID 1 array for the boot drives and had no problem installing my Hypervisor OS. Great device!