On Wed, Jan 09, 2019 at 10:40:08PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
m.2 sockets really common now.
Older ones are m.2 SATA. Your notebook is old enough that I'm 90% sure it would be m.2 SATA.
Newer computers have m.2 NVMe sockets. Those will accept m.2 SATA devices anyway.
There's a third class that I don't understand: M.2 AHCI.
I think that would be PCIe attached like NVMe but with an integrated AHCI PCIe interface so older OSs can talk to it without having NVMe support. Of course that kills the performance benefits of NVMe, but does add compatibility.
Many modern desktop motherboards have m.2 slots. Starting, I think, with the Intel 7th gen (7xxx) or perhaps 8th gen (8xxx). It's not that they couldn't do it sooner but it got compelling when NVMe became available: a lot faster than SATA. Just for fun, here's the cheapest one I've found on newegg.ca (not a recommendation): <https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813144164>
Inconveniently for you, most notebooks with m.2 sockets don't have another disk interface. And they are awkward to open.
Adapter cards for a desktop are about $25 and up: <https://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=m.2+to+pcie+adapter&ignorear=0&N=-1&isNodeId=1>
Summary: m.2 sockets are common.
Recommendation: remove the drive from your computer. You don't want any of your experiments to damage your data.
Yes accessing an M.2 drive isn't that hard these days. -- Len Sorensen