PCIe VS SATA iMac Late 2015

[Eazy Kamikaze]

Hi all,

I'm confused by what my system report show about my drives... the main drive on my iMac is an Apple SSD 256GB and I added a 2TB SSD with the SATA wire... but in the system report both drives appears in the SATA section... and in the PCI section it says that I don't have anything PCI...?! Like you can see in the screenshots, the Apple disk is clearly identified as PCIe... so why does it appear in the SATA section?!

That was my question, thanks!

 

[Amethyst1]

Like you can see in the screenshots, the Apple disk is clearly identified as PCIe... so why does it appear in the SATA section?!

The Apple SSUBX SSD uses the AHCI interface, just like a SATA SSD, but over a much faster PCIe 2.0 ×4 connection. macOS showing it as SATA is just a side effect of that. For more info, here’s my thread on these SSDs.

 

[Eazy Kamikaze]

The Apple SSUBX SSD uses the AHCI interface, just like a SATA SSD, but over a much faster PCIe 2.0 ×4 connection. macOS showing it as SATA is just a side effect of that. For more info, here’s my thread on these SSDs.

Thanks! I was looking at this because I'm gonna turn my iMac into a display... is there a way to keep that Apple SSD externally? What would be the reader... SATA or PCIe...? If that make any sense...

 

[Amethyst1]

[…] is there a way to keep that Apple SSD externally? What would be the reader... SATA or PCIe...? If that make any sense...

Apple‘s AHCI PCIe SSDs use a custom 12+16-pin connector so you either need a Transcend JetDrive 825/855 Thunderbolt enclosure which has the correct connector, or use an adapter to go from the connector to a PCIe card and put that into a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe enclosure.

SATA has nothing to do with it, and a cheap USB-to-NVMe enclosure won’t work either because (1) it has the wrong connector (m.2) and (2) your SSD isn’t an NVMe drive.

 

[Eazy Kamikaze]

Apple‘s AHCI PCIe SSDs use a custom 12+16-pin connector so you either need a Transcend JetDrive 825/855 Thunderbolt enclosure which has the correct connector, or use an adapter to go from the connector to a PCIe card and put that into a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe enclosure.

SATA has nothing to do with it, and a cheap USB-to-NVMe enclosure won’t work either because (1) it has the wrong connector (m.2) and (2) your SSD isn’t an NVMe drive.

Thank you very much for the answers, I'll see if it's worth it... for 250GB maybe not

 

[Amethyst1]

Thank you very much for the answers, I'll see if it's worth it... for 250GB maybe not

I forgot to mention the Transcend enclosures have a PCIe 2.0 ×2 connection (this is a limit of their Thunderbolt controller) and will bottleneck the SSD.

 

[Eazy Kamikaze]

I forgot to mention the Transcend enclosures have a PCIe 2.0 ×2 connection (this is a limit of their Thunderbolt controller) and will bottleneck the SSD.

Thanks... this is the enclosure you're talking about I guess... https://www.transcend-info.com/product/internal-ssd/cm10g

 

[Eazy Kamikaze]

I forgot to mention the Transcend enclosures have a PCIe 2.0 ×2 connection (this is a limit of their Thunderbolt controller) and will bottleneck the SSD.

Would this enclosure work? https://ca.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENP1AW/

 

[Amethyst1]

Thanks... this is the enclosure you're talking about I guess... https://www.transcend-info.com/product/internal-ssd/cm10g

I was talking about the JetDrive 825/855. This one doesn’t differentiate between AHCI and NVMe PCIe SSDs so it would be a shot in the dark.

Would this enclosure work? https://ca.macsales.com/item/OWC/MAU3ENP1AW/

The JMicron JMS-586 supports both AHCI and NVMe so it should™ work. (I wasn’t aware of this enclosure.)

 

[Eazy Kamikaze]

I bought this one finally... https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0B6ZVH49H/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1