M.2 SSD showing up as SATA

biocentrism

New Member
I have installed an M.2 SSD, the Samsung XP941 MZHPU512HCGL-00000.

HWInfo shows the M.2 SSD as being installed with a 6Gb/s SATA controller.  See attached screenshots. From what I understand, this was to be installed as a M.2 PCIe.

I would like to know if HWiNFO is capabale of identifying an M.2 SSD PCIe card or is the technology so new that it just classifies it as SATA 6Gb/s?

This is especially important to me as I have been experiencing problems with this M.2 SSD as it operated 50% slower than my SATA SSD as well as my HDD.  So I am wondering if there was an installation problem where they somehow did not activate the PCIe and therefore the drive is operating poorly.

My motherboard is an Asus X99-Deluxe running with a 5960X CPU and a single Nvidia GTX980 GPU.

Any insights into this would be much appreciated!

Here is a link with further information:  www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2471270/ssd-slower-sata-ssd.html
 

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Even though the drive is connected to PCIe, it's interface is still SATA and that's what HWiNFO reports. There's no special treating of PCIe SATA drives (yet).
But you might check the PCI Bus node in the main window and find the appropriate device there to see PCI details.
 
When you say "it's interface is still SATA" do you mean that the Samsung is actually connected via SATA or do you mean there is a limitation on how HW can classify drives and so while it may be connected directly to the mobo via the PCIe without going through a SATA controller, HW is unable to detect all that and so classifies it as having a SATA controller?

When I look at the PCI Bus node, the drive appears there in the PCIe x4 channel, but again it also says it has a SATA controller. So I am confused.

I have attached the report. I really appreciate your insights in helping me understand this.
 

Attachments

As you can see the SSD is connected to PCIe, but it has a SATA Bridge (Samsung Electronics SATA AHCI Controller) to implement the SATA protocol used.
 
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