Check your computer specifications to see which interface and form factor your computer supports. It can be difficult to tell the difference between a PCIe and a SATA connection if you look at the slot on the motherboard. The most important aspect to consider is which form factor and interface is installed on your computer. By comparing the performance of an M.2/PCIe/NVMe drive to a 2.5-inch mSATA or an external drive, you will also find variations in speed. The speed will also differ if you pair an M.2 with PCIe or SATA. Likewise, drive speeds are directly affected by the interface. While the latest external SSDs have incredible write speeds, they cannot reach those speeds using older connections such as USB-A. It depends on your system, and its form factor and interface. So, which is faster? The answer really is: it depends. The Crucial X8 portable SSD can reach the following transfer speeds using various connections. Obviously aging USB-A interfaces are slower than newer USB-C. The USB connector your device utilizes directly affects transfer speeds such as type A or type C. The combination of the NVMe protocol and the PCIe connection with an SSD results in read and write speeds that are 4x faster than a SATA SSD with a SCSI protocol.Īlmost every computer today has a USB connection, thus making it the ideal interface today when you use your drive on multiple computers or devices.

Combined with the PCIe bus and the increased read and write speeds of NAND technology, the NVMe protocol creates faster non-volatile storage. It was created to take advantage of the parallel nature of solid state drives. NVMe, NVM Express™, or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification, is a communication protocol designed specifically to work with flash memory using the PCIe® (PCI Express®) bus. What is NVMe, and why is it important to PCIe?

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