E7470 SATA SSD M.2 VS M.2 NVMe

On the E7470, yes they are interchangeable because it supports both (some systems only support M.2 SATA), but they are NOT the same.  M.2 SATA SSDs use the SATA interface, which has a theoretical maximum throughput of 6 Gbps (or 750 MB/s), and SATA SSDs typically max out around 500-600 MB/s.  See benchmarks of the Samsung 850 Pro for reference.  By comparison, M.2 NVMe SSDs use the much faster PCI Express interface, and in a system that offers PCIe 4 lanes to its SSD interface all running at max performance (which I believe is the case with the E7470 does), then that interface would be capable of 32 Gbps (4 GB/s), and some real-world NVMe SSDs can top 3 GB/s throughput.  See benchmarks of the Samsung 960 Evo for reference.  So the performance difference will be quite huge, although as you may have noticed, the price is quite different too.  And even if you don't get an NVMe SSD as high-end as the 960 Evo, or your system only gives its M.2 slot 2 PCIe lanes (or runs the 4 lanes in low power mode rather than max performance mode like the XPS 13, which is basically the same thing), you'll still get significantly better performance with an NVMe SSD than a SATA SSD.

Dell Latitude E7470...

If you are trying to clone / install Windows on M.2 NVMe (PCIe) SSD drive, you must change the SATA Operation (???) mode from RAID to ACHI. Or else the drive will not be visible on Windows 10 setup / Macrium Reflect / Paragon Hard Disk Manager.

Absolutely nonsense because NVMe has actually nothing to do with SATA...Spent many hours to figure this out.

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@HenriAsi wrote:

Dell Latitude E7470...

If you are trying to clone / install Windows on M.2 NVMe (PCIe) SSD drive, you must change the SATA Operation (???) mode from RAID to ACHI. Or else the drive will not be visible on Windows 10 setup / Macrium Reflect / Paragon Hard Disk Manager.

Absolutely nonsense because NVMe has actually nothing to do with SATA...Spent many hours to figure this out.

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I agree. Dell has used the "SATA Operation" heading in their BIOS interfaces for years now and at least on some systems has continued to do so even on systems with NVMe interfaces, and despite the name, changing that setting does indeed affect whether the NVMe interface is placed behind the Intel RST controller, not just the SATA interfaces.  I have an XPS 13 9350 right in front of me that works like this.  Just as a data point though, if you had supplied the Intel RST driver, your applications would have been able to see the drive even in RAID mode.

So you installed NVMe drive in a E7470? How's the performance been? Is it running at full speed? I'm looking into an ssd upgrade right now and the information out there's been quite conflicting.