Supported storage

What specific types of storage does the Framework support? I can’t find any references on the site for the supported specs.

Specifically, I’m trying to figure out if my m.2 2280 SATA (which fits in the socket) will work.

It supports a M-key M.2 NVMe drive of 2280 sizing (the most common size, and I don’t believe there are mounting screw points for smaller sizes). It has 4x PCIe 4.0 lanes on this connector, backwards compatible with older PCIe versions.

M.2 SATA drives are not supported.

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From the online documentation:

M.2 You can use M.2 2280-sized NVMe SSDs. We have drives from 250GB up to 4TB available in the Framework Marketplace, and drives ranging from 128GB to 8TB are available in the market. While drives from other brands should work, we’ve focused our compatibility testing on the following ones:

  • WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 250GB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 500GB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 1TB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 2TB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 4TB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ SSD 500GB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ SSD 1TB
  • WD_BLACK™ SN850 NVMe™ SSD 2TB
  • Western Digital SDBPNTY-256G
  • Western Digital SDBPNTY-512G
  • Western Digital SDBPNTY-1T00
  • Kioxia KXG6AZNV256G
  • Kioxia KXG6AZNV512G
  • Kioxia KXG6AZNV1T02
  • Kioxia KXG6APNV2T04

Note that SATA M.2 drives will not work on the Framework Laptop with 11th Gen Intel Core Processors. You will need to use an NVMe drive, which we would recommend anyway due to the significant performance improvements that brings.

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Thanks for the info! Is SATA and NVMe support mutually exclusive (meaning if something supports one, then it cannot support the other)?

In principle some computers could have M-key M.2 slots that support both SATA and PCIe/NVMe modes (there are config pins to inform the system which type it is), but it seems like a rarity in my experience, at least in recent times. I’ve not personally used a computer that supported both SATA and NVMe in one M.2 slot, but I assume that such exist since the connector standard is designed to allow that.

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I think the majority of desktop motherboard M.2 slots support both standards, but it just seems either Tiger Lake doesn’t have a SATA controller, or Framework hasn’t enabled/supported it.

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The PCI-e Gen4 interface on Tiger Lake doesn’t support SATA over the same interface, so we chose to support NVMe 4.0 and no SATA instead of a slower NVMe with SATA.

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I have an older WD SN720 I’m not using. Will it work?

Should work without issues

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12 posts were split to a new topic: BIOS can’t see M.2 SSD

With 12th Gen Intel® Core™ DIY Edition there is no SN750 (250GB) option any more … is it still compatible?

There should be no reason it’s not compatible, it’s just that 250 GB drives are getting hard to find lately so they may have skipped stocking them.

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Just looked for 15m and couldn’t find whether the new AMD laptops will have more than one full performance M.2 for NVMes. Is that info not released yet?

does framework also support a Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 ssd as well? looking to buy a 4tb ssd and it looks like this is the one i could find for a relatively good price but wandering if its even compatible with framework laptops?