How to set the M.2 SSD PCIe mode on Z97 Pro4?

First, Hard Disk Sentinel is wrong about your Plextor SSD using a SATA III interface, or being a SATA III SSD.

It is very common for programs like HD Sentinel to incorrectly identify PCIe SSDs, for several reasons.

1. The programs expect to only find SATA drives, so every drive becomes a SATA drive, but that is wrong.
2. Some PCIe SSDs use the Windows AHCI driver for the SSD's controller. Your Plextor SSD is one of those PCIe SSDs. When HD Sentinel detects the AHCI driver, it decides the SSD is a SATA SSD. Again, that is wrong.
3. Programs like this do not know or understand what a PCIe SSD is. They also don't know there are different kinds of PCIe SSDs, such as PCIe AHCI SSDs, and PCIe NVMe SSDs.

I have seen many different hardware information programs that cannot detect PCIe SSDs correctly. They have simply not been updated to work with PCIe SSDs.

Try using this program, called AIDA64 to check your PCIe SSD. You can download the trial version to use free for 30 days. Try the Extreme or Engineer versions. Click on Download for the free Trial version:

http://www.aida64.com/downloads

Run it and click on Storage, and then ATA. You should see all your drives listed at the top. Click on the Plextor for its information. Scroll to the bottom for the information you are looking for. This is an example of a Samsung PCIe AHCI SSD, an SM951:



You can see the Interface is PCI-E 3.0 x4 on my board, and this SSD uses the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. It is like your Plextor SSD, since its controller uses the standard Windows AHCI driver, msahci if you use Windows 7, and storahci if you use Win 8 - Win 10. The SSD loads the driver when you install it.

Your SSD is using the PCIe 2.0 x2 interface. Did you look in the Tools screen in the UEFI/BIOS, and start the System Browser tool? Move the mouse pointer over the M.2 slot and see what is shows.

Did you ever run a benchmark test on your SSD? I tested your Plextor SSD for someone on a mother board that they did not have, an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 board with an M.2 slot. You can tell the difference in the results, which are faster than any SATA III SSD:





You cannot believe everything PC hardware monitoring programs display. If the programs are not kept up to date, they make mistakes like displaying your Plextor M6e as a SATA drive.

Your Plextor M6e SSD cannot use a SATA III interface, just like a SATA III SSD cannot use a PCIe SSD interface. Yes, there are M.2 SATA SSDs, which I imagine is why you thought your SSD was being somehow connected to the SATA III chipset. An M6e cannot work like that.

So just because HD Sentinel displayed SATA III information about your SSD, you thought it was true?









Edited by parsec - 19 Feb 2016 at 1:52pm