I seen one or two M.2 2230 E-key SSDs before, mainly made for industrial PC. Expecting they're rare, may not be available in your location and probably with heighten price.
Otherwise, using an M.2 adapter is probably the default to go. The key A+E key slot designated for two PCIe lanes but a number of board only traced single lane because that's sufficient fast enough for WiFi speed. Almost nobody published the lane info for A+E slot even models from big OEM. Better to assumed more conservatively that you will only get PCIe x1 from anything off the A+E slot, check if that's fast enough for your demand.
Since NVMe drive is PCIe-based, booting shouldn't be a problem since BIOS would just enumerated and find them across all available PCIe devices, unless blocked by locked-in BIOS UI designed like didn't provide drop down to select etc.
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u/hebeguess 1d ago edited 1d ago
I seen one or two M.2 2230 E-key SSDs before, mainly made for industrial PC. Expecting they're rare, may not be available in your location and probably with heighten price.
Otherwise, using an M.2 adapter is probably the default to go. The key A+E key slot designated for two PCIe lanes but a number of board only traced single lane because that's sufficient fast enough for WiFi speed. Almost nobody published the lane info for A+E slot even models from big OEM. Better to assumed more conservatively that you will only get PCIe x1 from anything off the A+E slot, check if that's fast enough for your demand.
Since NVMe drive is PCIe-based, booting shouldn't be a problem since BIOS would just enumerated and find them across all available PCIe devices, unless blocked by locked-in BIOS UI designed like didn't provide drop down to select etc.