No M2 slot on motherboard + PCI Express Adapter + M2 SATA Drive - should work right?

[AndyD]

I thought that the m2 would make more sense if I decide to upgrade my PC later where the motherboard will likely have a M2 slot.  At first I thought that I could get a PCI Express adapter and still use a NVME Drive but didn't work.   I could install Windows on it but I was not able to boot from that drive.  Fair enough.

 

I'm now trying to do the same but instead a WD Blue M2 SATA Drive this time around.   I'm not seeing the drive during boot or in Windows.  Maybe something wrong with the hardware?  Or it's just not supported?

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

An M.2 adapter will not be able to boot it. It's not supposed to, its not the software or hardware. It's just a thing that, well, currently, we can't change.

[DevTech]

17 minutes ago, AndyD said:

I thought that the m2 would make more sense if I decide to upgrade my PC later where the motherboard will likely have a M2 slot.  At first I thought that I could get a PCI Express adapter and still use a NVME Drive but didn't work.   I could install Windows on it but I was not able to boot from that drive.  Fair enough.

 

I'm now trying to do the same but instead a WD Blue M2 SATA Drive this time around.   I'm not seeing the drive during boot or in Windows.  Maybe something wrong with the hardware?  Or it's just not supported?

What adapter are you using?

 

The ASUS Hyper series holds NVMe x 4 and boots no problem on older computers.

 

Just now, Mindovermaster said:

An M.2 adapter will not be able to boot it. It's not supposed to, its not the software or hardware. It's just a thing that, well, currently, we can't change.

Depends on what exactly he is using.

 

Booting from cards in expansion slots has been a part of the PC spec for ages...

 

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

1 minute ago, DevTech said:

What adapter are you using?

 

The ASUS Hyper series holds NVMe x 4 and boots no problem on older computers.

 

I think BIOS/UEFI have to have that option to do that. Remember back when USB sticks wouldn't boot?

3 minutes ago, DevTech said:

Depends on what exactly he is using.

 

Booting from cards in expansion slots has been a part of the PC spec for ages...

 

SSD's have worked for ages, yes, but this M.2 is a totally different architecture.

[AndyD]

Nevermind guys.  I reached out to Startech.   I misunderstood the specs.  Will try to return and just get a plain SSD

[DevTech]

1 minute ago, Mindovermaster said:

I think BIOS/UEFI have to have that option to do that. Remember back when USB sticks wouldn't boot?

USB was very different.

 

There is a hand-off protocol for on-board cards since before those USB no-boot days.

 

Either way, we are seriously missing the info need to make sense of the problem:

 

1. What motherboard?

 

2. What adapter card?

 

3. What is being booted?

[DevTech]

2 minutes ago, AndyD said:

Nevermind guys.  I reached out to Startech.   I misunderstood the specs.  Will try to return and just get a plain SSD

You thinking was sound, particularly if it included the phenomenal Samsung 960 series.

 

Get the ASUS Hyper card. It is actually better than some of the on-board motherboard implementations that quietly let you plug in an expensive NVMe x 4 and then just give you 2 PCIe lanes...

 

[DevTech]

https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessory/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD/

 

- Supports up to four PCIE® 3.0 M.2 drives, with transfer bandwidth up to 128Gbps

- Supports Intel VROC technology, allowing you to use CPU PCIe® lanes to create BOOTable RAID arrays

- Integrated blower-style fan to prevent throttling

 

Note: you can still find the less expensive card that takes a single NVMe x 4 drive nline here and there. Been on the market since 2014...

 

[Bryan R.]

It is possible to boot from NVMe drives attached via PCIe cards. It comes down to whether the motherboard has an NVMe driver to recognize the NVMe device. If you are adventurous, you could even go so far as to modify your BIOS to include the driver....

 

Rumor has it that the Samsung 950 Pro has a controller that is compatible with traditional BIOS and you can boot from it but good luck getting one.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

19 minutes ago, Bryan R. said:

It is possible to boot from NVMe drives attached via PCIe cards. It comes down to whether the motherboard has an NVMe driver to recognize the NVMe device. If you are adventurous, you could even go so far as to modify your BIOS to include the driver....

That's what I was trying to say...

[DevTech]

OMG

 

I feel like the guy in this Tom's hardware question who posts multiple times the drive booting with a screenshot and everyone then keeps asking if it will work.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2904233/adapter-fpr-pcie.html

 

"I'm wrinting in chinese? IT WILL BOT, LOOK AT THE SCREENSHOTS!!
and I already told you, I'm using the cheapest adapter that I found on ebay. It makes no diference whatsoever, it acts only as an extension cord!!"

 

ASUS:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Asus-M-2-X4-Card-flexibility/dp/B017YUCAXS

 

Cheap Equivalent:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MYCQP38/

 

I suspect the confusion is coming from people that can't read specs. These cards need an actual M.2 NVMe x 4 SSD! Using any other SSD type that happens to fit in a M.2 slot won't work.

 

And yeah, if you want to go extreme, there is a limit to how old the mobo can go. The example poster used a PCIe 2.0 system instead of 3.0 and it worked

 

I have the ASUS Hyper sitting on a shelf. If I get another M.2 drive and I can find some older motherboards, I will try and test how far back we can go into computer history and expect it to boot ok. The ASUS P6T seems old enough to cover most cases but I will try to go older. Send me your M.2 drives and I'll test them  otherwise it might be a while before I budget to buy another Samsung 960.

 

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

There are a few different kinds of M.2 to PCIe adapter boards because M.2 SSDs come in AHCI/SATA and PCIe/NVMe versions.

 

There are some PCIe cards like the Startech PXM2SAT32N1 or the Addonics AD2M2S-PX4 which allow you to add two (2) M.2 SATA SSDs and one (1) M.2 NVMe SSD to a system.  These cards have SATA data and power connectors on them to connect the SATA SSDs to the motherboard's SATA connectors and to get power from the power supply.  The M.2 NVMe SSD gets its power directly over the PCIe bus from the card. 

 

There are also low-power versions of these 2×SATA + 1×NVMe cards like the StarTech PEXM2SAT32N1 or the Addonics AD3M2SPX4 which just have SATA data connectors and provide power for the M.2 SATA SSDs from the PCIE card.  These require lower-power M.2 SATA SSDs.

 

There are some PCIe cards like the Addonics ADM2PX4, ADM2NVMPX4, Startech's PEX4M2E1 and the ASUS Hyper M.2 X4 Mini Card which just have a single M.2 NVMe connector and take their power over the PCIe bus.

 

Regardless of what you choose, in order for a M.2 NVMe SSD to be recognized, the motherboard's UEFI (BIOS) firmware has to support the NVMe protocol in order to access an M.2 NVMe SSD.

 

There's a third kind of SSD which is Intel's Optane memory.  It might work in an M.2 NVMe to PCIe adapter board, but again the motherboard would still require Intel Optane support.  That's somewhat of a guess on my part, though, as I haven't used the technology myself.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

[DevTech]

20 minutes ago, goretsky said:

Hello,

 

There are a few different kinds of M.2 to PCIe adapter boards because M.2 SSDs come in AHCI/SATA and PCIe/NVMe versions.

 

There are some PCIe cards like the Startech PXM2SAT32N1 or the Addonics AD2M2S-PX4 which allow you to add two (2) M.2 SATA SSDs and one (1) M.2 NVMe SSD to a system.  These cards have SATA data and power connectors on them to connect the SATA SSDs to the motherboard's SATA connectors and to get power from the power supply.  The M.2 NVMe SSD gets its power directly over the PCIe bus from the card. 

 

There are also low-power versions of these 2×SATA + 1×NVMe cards like the StarTech PEXM2SAT32N1 or the Addonics AD3M2SPX4 which just have SATA data connectors and provide power for the M.2 SATA SSDs from the PCIE card.  These require lower-power M.2 SATA SSDs.

 

There are some PCIe cards like the Addonics ADM2PX4, ADM2NVMPX4, Startech's PEX4M2E1 and the ASUS Hyper M.2 X4 Mini Card which just have a single M.2 NVMe connector and take their power over the PCIe bus.

 

Regardless of what you choose, in order for a M.2 NVMe SSD to be recognized, the motherboard's UEFI (BIOS) firmware has to support the NVMe protocol in order to access an M.2 NVMe SSD.

 

There's a third kind of SSD which is Intel's Optane memory.  It might work in an M.2 NVMe to PCIe adapter board, but again the motherboard would still require Intel Optane support.  That's somewhat of a guess on my part, though, as I haven't used the technology myself.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

I like your detailed listing of solutions.

 

The specific BIOS support issue appears hard to pin down. The working example in the Tom's Hardware link I posted was a pre-M.2 NVMe motherboard, ASUS P6T,  where everything worked fine. 

 

It is unclear how old of a motherboard one should expect this to work and what the BIOS would need to scan for to see a bootable drive, but matbe we can drill down to a specific period/technolgy level where this would all be expected to work.

 

Clearly it is working on much older hardware that some people imagine it should ...

 

[DevTech]

23 minutes ago, DevTech said:

The specific BIOS support issue appears hard to pin down. The working example in the Tom's Hardware link I posted was a pre-M.2 NVMe motherboard, ASUS P6T,  where everything worked fine. 

 

It is unclear how old of a motherboard one should expect this to work and what the BIOS would need to scan for to see a bootable drive, but matbe we can drill down to a specific period/technolgy level where this would all be expected to work.

 

Clearly it is working on much older hardware that some people imagine it should ...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express

 

The spec was finalized and released in March 2011

 

NVMe was added to the LINUX Kernel in March, 2012.

 

The first drives available were 2013, common in 2014.

 

Windows 8.1, April 2014 was the first Windows to include it "in the box"

 

So, a quality name brand motherboard made in 2012 or later with updated BIOS could work fine.

 

Note to readers: This discussion only applies to which motherboards can BOOT from a slot mounted NVMe drive. ANY computer with 4 spare PCIe lanes will work just fine using the drive as a drive.

 

 

 

 

[DevTech]

12 hours ago, Mindovermaster said:

I think BIOS/UEFI have to have that option to do that. Remember back when USB sticks wouldn't boot?

SSD's have worked for ages, yes, but this M.2 is a totally different architecture.

Ok, so Goretsky has done a great job differentiating some of the different types of adapter cards.

 

And I have started to detail some of the years, that things came out.

 

So you are right about there being a concern if you go back far enough and depending on the exact type of your M.2 drive and the exact type of Adapter Card.

 

So I'm being lazy by assuming the word "older motherboard" had a common meaning with everyone and I hope to establish some real dates cross referenced to the type of Adapter per Goretsky's detailed listing.

 

With the right Firmware on the card plugged into the PCI Express slot, any computer that the card could be plugged into should boot the computer even if the card had an array of floppy drives or QR Paper Scanners as a boot media.

 

So the specific distinction here is that there is a Dumb Boot pass-through standard to make cheap adapter cards that just allow a NVMe drive to essentially direct-connect to the computers PCIe bus. And for that there would need to be some level of BIOS support starting 2011 or later. And trying to connect a M.2 SATA drive that way would be just plain sillyness.

 

 

[AndyD]

I think what threw me off was the fact that the box for the PCI Express adapter mentions...

 

"PCIe M2 SSD (NVMe or ACHI)"

 

I took ACHI to mean SATA but that was a mistake. 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

The ASUS P6T-series of HEDT motherboards is based on Intel's X58 chipset which was released in 2008 and predates NVMe specification by three years.  ASUS P9X79 series, released in 2011 and based on Intel's X79 chipset, did not support NVMe, however, ASUS did release a UEFI (BIOS) firmware update for one model in this series (a high-end gaming/enthusiast board whose name escapes me at the moment), and there is an almost 50-page thread in ASUS' gaming forum with links to UEFI (BIOS) firmware patched by a third-party.  I have made use of the patched firmware on an ASUS P9X79 PRO and can confirm that it does work to allow NVMe support when paired with a M.2 to PCIe adapter (I used ASUS' own Hyper model to help rule out any potential compatibility issues).

 

A bit of searching did find a discussion of how to get an ASUS P6T motherboard to boot from an intermediate USB flash drive and inject an NVMe option ROM into the boot process at https://audiocricket.com/2016/12/31/booting-samsung-sm961-on-asus-p6t-se-mainboard/.  There are also many discussions at the Win-RAID Forum about this subject that may provide additional methods.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

23 hours ago, DevTech said:

I like your detailed listing of solutions.

 

The specific BIOS support issue appears hard to pin down. The working example in the Tom's Hardware link I posted was a pre-M.2 NVMe motherboard, ASUS P6T,  where everything worked fine. 

 

It is unclear how old of a motherboard one should expect this to work and what the BIOS would need to scan for to see a bootable drive, but matbe we can drill down to a specific period/technolgy level where this would all be expected to work.

 

Clearly it is working on much older hardware that some people imagine it should ...