Review on 💥 Enhance Performance with StarTech.com 2x M.2 SATA SSD Controller Card - PCIe by Dave Hunt

I have a low power ITX mini mobile computer with 4 SATA ports. All of them are used on FreeNAS. I used the suggested setup for mirrored USB drives. 2 small cruisers Sandisk. About a year later, one of them dropped out. I replaced it and a few months later the other one broke. I don't think these are bad devices, they just aren't designed for 24/7 use. In any case, I need another solution. I had a PCI-e slot to work with. I bought a cheap M.2 "controller" not knowing that SATA cables are needed to work. Oops. So I googled a bit more and found this. I didn't need NVMe speed. I mean, this system worked fine with two USB sticks. Considering how cheap SATA controllers are, I felt this was a little pricey. I mean I could get a 2 port PCIe SATA controller for around $12. In any case, I've worked with StarTech material before and it's always been of good quality. After some reading, it looked like the controller chip on this one would be happy to play with FreeNAS. I installed this 32GB Tranend SATA M.2 drive, installed the card in the machine and reinstalled FreeNAS. Imported 2 of my mirror arrays, changed some settings, let it restart about 6 times when I changed something and it went through the import process, made sure all my imported settings worked, then powered it off, installed another M .2 drive and booted back up, set up a mirror boot disk and boom, perfection. There are no more US dollar discs on the back and everything works great. Final Thoughts. I think for the money it's worth it. There are more expensive solutions out there but the instructions are great and it seems well made. I waited 4 months before writing this review. The length of the card also plays a role. My FreeNAS machine is housed in a Fractal Design Node 304. There is room inside the enclosure itself, but there are plenty of power supplies and SATA cables. It was a bit difficult. Warning: Some BIOSes do not like to boot from PCIe devices. Try and research before you buy this. If you have a cheap PCIe SATA controller. Put a boot disk on it, even a CD-ROM/DVD, and see if it boots. In general, if you're in the BIOS and see it as a boot option, you're spot on. However, if you are reading this review and considering buying one of these, you probably know what you are doing. I hope that was helpful.