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Motherboards typically limit the number of internal solid-state drives you can install. Most come with anywhere between two and four M.2 slots, though you can find options with support for more than that. But unless you have a specialized board, you may run out of slots eventually. That doesn’t bode well for anyone who has a small collection of M.2 SSDs lying around. With purported shortages, it’s not such a bad thing these days to have extras, except you can’t use them if you don’t have any open slots. You can cleverly convert old SSDs into an external drive with the right enclosure setup. Or, you could grab a $9 PCIe 4.0 X4 adapter from Amazon to make use of any open PCIe expansion slots you have.
Do note it doesn’t work with older PCIe X1 or PCI slots, only PCIe 1.0 to 4.0 slots with lanes X4 and above, including X8 and X16. However, if you want the fastest possible speeds, PCIe 4.0 is the recommended standard to use. Moreover, your SSD must support PCIe 3.0 or 4.0. Some processors, like older Intel CPUs, don’t support PCIe 4.0. Basically, if your CPU, motherboard slots, and SSD all support the configuration, you’re good to go.
You install the M.2 SSD to the card as you would your motherboard, and attach the included and adaptable heatsink where applicable. Then, you plug the card into an open and compatible PCIe slot and you can access the drive like normal. Glotrends, the company that makes the adapter, says it works with Windows 8, 10, and 11, as well as macOS. It should also support booting from the drive on most newer machines. That’s great to hear, considering SSDs are worth their weight in gold nowadays.
What are reviewers saying about the Glotrends PCIe SSD adapter?
As usual, one of the great ways to understand how well a product works and how many people are happy with it is to take a look at the user reviews, which Amazon makes fairly easy. That’s especially relevant for something that’s only $9. It would seem that most people have been successful at adding new solid-state drives through an open PCIe slot. There are over 5,300 total reviews on Amazon with an aggregated score of 4.6 out of 5 stars.
At an overview level, it looks like the card works great with many PCs, new and old, offering full PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 speeds with great compatibility. Some top reviewers say it “works great in servers,” functions as advertised in a personal NAS, and even works in older computers like a 10-year-old Z97. The latter makes sense, as PCIe slots are forward- and backward-compatible, so it’s mostly the speeds that will be limited by the lowest common denominator. Someone did mention the LED on the board is “really bright,” which might be an issue if your computer is in a bedroom. Others mention they were unable to get the board to support booting from an SSD as promised, and there are a couple of reviewers that mention it caused crashes, malfunctions, and drive issues. Those problems don’t appear to be the norm, but they’re worth noting nonetheless.
All in, it’s an accessible and fairly easy way to add an extra SSD to your computer if you’ve run out of open M.2 slots. SSDs aren’t ideal for long-term storage for several reasons, but that doesn’t matter as much when you’re strapped for space or have some extras handy.
