Is this a sata drive or an m.2 drive? the picture is of an m.2 but the descriptions sounds like it's a sata drive.

It is an m.2 drive with a sata 3 connection. Read this https://rog.asus.com/articles/product-news/ssd-guide-pci-express-m-2-msata-and-sata-express-the-differences-explained/ and make sure your mobo accepts 2280 m.2

I know it states pc as platform but does anyone know if this will work for a mac? my mac currently has a similar ssd. thanks

I have installed WD Blue SSDs in my 2014 Mac Mini and in my 2015 21" iMac and have had no problem at all. The connectors are standard SATA, which is what both of my Macs had. So no adapters needed. Disk Utility was able to format the drive as a GIUD partition and then I used Carbon Copy Cloner to the old hard drive over to the SSD in an external enclosure. CCC also made the SSD a bootable volume (it copied EVERYTHING ... OS, applications, and data files). Once the SSD had everything on it I took the precaution of setting System Preferences/Startup Drive to the SSD (while it was still in the external enclosure) to confirm that it would boot from that drive. I knew it was booting from the SSD because normally my computer would take just over 3 minutes to boot from the old drive. When I booted it from the external SSD it booted in 27 seconds. By the way, the external enclosure was a USB 3.0 enclosure. If you use a USB 2.0 enclosure it won't be as fast. When I did the same thing to the Mac Mini the boot time went from just over 1 minutes with the old drive to 14.5 seconds booting from the SSD. It's like having a brand new computer.

In the title i see a speed of sata iii 6 gb/s which is what my hard drive says for its speed. does that mean they will perform equally?

"Sata 3, 6Gb/s" is not the speed of the drive itself, it is the speed of the lanes which all of the sata ports use, combined. It's somewhat like saying the top average speed of 10 sprinters is 15mph, so the track they are running on is a 150mph track. Mechanical hard drives usually top out at a transfer speed of 150Mb/s, due to the moving parts inside, and the time it takes to convert the data on the magnetic disk inside. An SSD on the other hand, has no moving parts. The data is stored on memory chips, meaning there is no time lost in mechanical exchange. Sata-based SSD's (including this one) typically top out at 550Mb/s transfer speeds. Be careful when you are buying a M.2 style SSD, as you have to make sure that your motherboard supports the one you are choosing. There are 2 different types. M.2 Sata 3, and M.2 PCIe. The M.2 Sata 3 uses the Sata data lanes, just as your hard drive does, while the M.2 PCIe style takes advantage of the faster transfer speeds of the PCIe data lanes, and transfers the data through the same lines that your graphics card uses. Those SSD's can go as high as 3500Mb/s transfer speeds. (All speeds mentioned are READ speeds. WRITE speeds tend to be less than the given read speed on any drive style.)

so this just straight up plugs into m2 slots what about the ears on the end? thinking about adding this as a 2nd m2 in my gaming rig

If your rig is compatible with M.2 SATA III, it is just a matter of plugging it in and configuring the operating system to how you want to use the SSD. The Acronis software you can download from WD website does a solid job of copying any existing SSD contents to the new one and making it as the system bootable SSD.

Hard Drive	500 GB Solid State Drive
Brand	Western Digital
Series	WD Blue SA510 SATA SSD
Item model number	WDS500G3B0B
Hardware Platform	PC, laptop
Item Weight	0.176 ounces
Product Dimensions	5 x 4 x 1 inches
Item Dimensions LxWxH	5 x 4 x 1 inches
Color	Blue
Flash Memory Size	500 GB
Hard Drive Interface	Serial ATA-600
Manufacturer	Sandisk Technologies, Inc.
Language	English
ASIN	B09ZYQG5C1
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer	No
Date First Available	May 16, 2022

WD Blue SA510 500GB SATA SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, M.2 2280, Internal Solid State Drive, Up to 560 MB/s - WDS500G3B0B

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