thinQmaster Virtual testing partner Adaptive practice exams that find your weak spots and drill them. Every answer explained. From $69
Enroll

thinQmaster

Find your exam

Five questions free, before you decide.

Step 1 · choose a vendor

In one of our camps? Your practice exams come with the tuition — they are on your study page already.

IT Support & Hardware · Foundational

Drive Form Factor

The physical size standard for storage devices, such as 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch, M.2, and U.2.

Definition

3.5-inch drives are desktop and NAS HDDs, 2.5-inch drives are laptop HDDs and SATA SSDs, M.2 cards are compact SSDs, and U.2/E3.S are enterprise NVMe formats. Mounting adapters allow 2.5-inch drives in 3.5-inch bays. Laptop drive bays may also have height limits such as 7 mm.

Example

Use a 2.5-to-3.5-inch adapter bracket to mount a SATA SSD in a desktop drive cage.

Exam tip

Check drive thickness (7 mm vs 9.5 mm) when replacing laptop drives.

Related terms