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M.2 SSDs can be using different kind of interface and/or communication protocol depending on the model of the drive.

  • If a M.2 SSD has a SATA interface, the software should support it without problems, the drive will be visible as a SATA/SSD drive in the user interface and in the erasure report.
  • If a M.2 SSD has a PCIe interface, the software may support it: PCIe drives have an internal communication protocol that is either a SATA protocol or an NVMe protocol.
    • If the M.2 SSD with PCIe interface has a SATA protocol, the sofware should be able to detect it (as SATA/SSD) and erase it providing at least clear-level erasure result.
    • If the M.2 SSD with PCIe interface has a NVMe protocol, the software does not support them at the moment.

(a.k.a. Next Generation Form Factor / NGFF) is form factor for SSDs that is popular in new laptops and tablets thanks to its small dimensions and weight. M.2 SSDs have three possible interfaces (which use may depend on the type of M.2 storage device, host machine capabilities and operating system support):

  • Legacy SATA: these behave as SATA SSDs, they use the AHCI driver (~400 MB/s for read/write operations). Blancco Drive Eraser displays them as SATA/SSD drives (in the interface and report).
  • PCI Express using AHCI: these drives have a PCI Express interface but use the AHCI driver for backwards compatibility (~400MB/s for read/write operations). Blancco Drive Eraser displays them as SATA/SSD drives (in the interface and report).
  • PCI Express using NVMe: these drives have a PCI Express interface and use the NVMe driver, achieving high-performance thanks to its extended parallelism (~1GB/s per PCIe lane for read/write operations). Blancco Drive Eraser displays them as NVMe drives (in the interface and report).

 Blancco Drive Eraser can detect and erase M.2 SSDs since version 6.1.0 (overwriting and - if supported by - firmware erasure).