NVMe drives and compatibility

hard drivemotherboardnvme

I am trying to understand the issues with the new NVMe interface and older motherboards.

I have a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC and I simply cannot workout whether I should buy NVMe or AHCI.

In short:

If I buy an NVMe drive for a motherboard that doesn't support NVMe natively, which of these scenarios is the correct one:

1 – I cannot boot into my NVMe drive, but I can take full NVME advantage as a secondary drive

2 – I cannot boot into my NVMe drive, but I can use it as a secondary drive with some limitations

3 – I cannot use my NVMe drive at all

Best Answer

I seem to have found exactly what I am looking for in this article:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2899351/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nvme.html

Quoted from the article:

One of the best things about NVM Express is that you don’t have to worry about drivers showing up. Linux has had NVMe support since kernel 3.1; Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 both include a native driver, and there’s a FreeBSD driver in the works. When Apple decides to support NVMe, the latter should make it easy to port.

However, BIOS support is largely lacking. Without an NVMe-aware BIOS, you can’t boot from an NVMe drive, though anyone with a x4 PCIe slot or M.2 connector can benefit from employing an NVMe drive as secondary storage.

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