M.2. PCIe adapter with two M.2 SSDs only shows one

Question

I have just finished my (first ever) server build. Everything seems to work ok. Except I only see one of the two NVMe M.2 SSDs that I installed via a PCIe adapter. (At least, it shows as 500 GB, rather than 1 TB.)

• Are the NVMe SSDs faulty?
• Or is the adapter automatically generating some sort of RAID array?
• If so, how can I modify this?
• Or am I missing some setting somewhere?

The hardware (amongst others):

• Fujitsu D3417-B2 MB
• ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 Card (M.2 PCIe adapter for up to 4 M.2 drives)More hardware info
• 2 500GB WD ST4000VN008-2DR166 NVMe SSDs in the adapter
• 1 250GB WD WDS500G2X0c-00L350 NVMe SSD on the motherboard
• 2 4TB SATA HDDs

The following image shows screenshot of BIOS - the highlighted drive is the one in the M.2 PCIe adapter

Additional info:

• The 250GB has EXSi installed - also there the SSD shows as 500GB, rather than 2x500GB
• The status leds on the ASUS adapter on both slots with SSD are lit
• The manual mentions “For Intel® motherboards, go to Advanced > CPU Storage Configuration, then set the PCIE slot(s) that you have installed the Hyper M.2 x16 card(s) to [Hyper M.2 X16].” But I cannot find this option..

Solution 1

Check the manual for the PCIe card carefully - Some of the cheaper ones actually consist of 1x PCIe M2 slot and 1x SATA M2 slot but with the SATA slot needing to be connected in to the motherboard to work.

For example - this model: https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=575&area=en

(I bought one of these and was disappointed to discover that limitation).

I'd check the link you've posted but the manual for the ASUS card you've linked deals exclusively with the RAID setup process (it doesn't discuss the hardware at all).

Solution 2

A review of the ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 PCIe RAID card manual shows it cannot be configured except as RAID. If you want to have 1,000 GB of storage using the two 500 GB M.2 drives, you must configure it for RAID 0, which is a more fragile system than having each M.2 drive assigned to its own drive letter; if either drive fails, the content of both drives is lost.

The Fujitsu motherboard uses an Intel CPU, so you would follow Chapter One of the Asus instructions. You cannot use RAID 1, RAID 5, or RAID 10; you must use RAID 0.

Furthermore, section 1.1.3 Paragraph 2 notes

Due to chipset limitation, when SATA ports are set to RAID mode, all SATA ports run at RAID mode together.

If so, this may require you configure your SATA HDDs for RAID, which you may not want.

I would suggest you consider returning this to the vendor if you don't want that.

Solution 3

After some back and forth with the retailer, they finally confirmed the MB and adapter are indeed not compatible.. Thanks!

Solution 4

The PCIE adapter in the original posters case requires a mainboard with Bifurbication support, while the adapter was confirmed incompatible, the reason why was never addressed.

Bifurbication splits a 16x or 8x electrical slot into a division of that slots max lane count, in some cases support can be modded in using bios and uefi editors.

Not all motherboards that can be modded support a full 4x4x4x4x bifurbication and can adapt to 3 out of a possible 4.

Since the original posters mainboard did not support this, only the nvme on the first 4 lanes was visible to the machine.

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Comments

[Tonny]

The ASUS website (and a number of shop-websites that sell these) specifically list this card as only compatible with a small number of Asus main-boards. Are you sure it is supposed to work with your Fujitsu system ?

[3JL]

@Tonny, according to my reseller it is. Let me double check with them.

[3JL]

@K7AAY, thanks for the edits. Re configuring. Maybe that’s the issue: I do not know how/where to configure the device. There is nothing/not much about this in the manual. It does say: “For Intel® motherboards, go to Advanced > CPU Storage Configuration, then set the PCIE slot(s) that you have installed the Hyper M.2 x16 card(s) to [Hyper M.2 X16].” But I cannot find this option..

[Ron Maupin]

@KamilMaciorowski, Super User is not a discussion forum, but it is, by definition, a Q&A forum because anybody is allowed to ask or answer questions.

[3JL]

Thanks @Adam, I have also seen the cards you mention. This one seems different. I have added more hardware info in the original post.