Which type PCIE slots are supported by RST 17.8.0.1065?

[BSwid3]

Hi, new Dell XPS8900 with a MB M.2 attached NVME drives (only one slot). I purchased a PCIE x4 NVME SSD adapter and installed into the machine. Windows sees the drives just fine, but IRST won't let me create a volume. I installed the new Optane, and it shows me both drives (the M.2 NVME and the PCIE slot NVME) , but it will not let me create a RAID-1 volume. I do not see the PCIE slot NVME in the RST screen in the BIOS. Doing some reading I see that a PCIE slot can either be connected via the PCH or connected directly to the CPU. I see different information about which type of slot is supported by IRST. Can you confirm which should work- a drive in a PCH connected PCIE slot or a drive in a PCIE slot connected directly to the CPU? Thanks.

[n_scott_pearson]

Provided your motherboard's BIOS can support NVMe redirection from that PCIe slot, you should be ok. If not, it isn't going to work. Some BIOS' default to NVMe Redirection being disabled, so look for related parameters in BIOS Setup.

Hope this helps,

...S

[BSwid3]

Thanks for the reply n.Scott! Nothing in the bios config screens at all even close to that. In fact, I can find nothing that even mentions NVMe. To expand on this, I can see the drive attached to the PCIE card just fine in windows device manager and disk management and use it normally. I just can't see it in the BIOS device screen, not will Optane let me build a volume. It shows both disks (the board-attached m.2 NVME boot drive and the PCIE card attached one), but when I select "create volume", it asks me for a volume name, but the volume type radio buttons and the "next" button is inactive....

[n_scott_pearson]

Ok. I will presume from this that NVMe Redirection is always on for the M.2 connector but there is no support in the BIOS for NVMe Redirection for any other PCIe connector. I personally would call this a bug in the BIOS, but you will need to argue this with Dell (good luck there; those slime buckets will probably want money to fix it - if they'll even fix it at all).

...S

[BSwid3]

Thanks again n.scott! Yes, definitely appears to be something screwy in the BIOS. I cloned the boot drive and I'm able to boot from it- but only if I manually select it in the boot settings (f12) menu. There's no way in tarnation that I can find to set it to be the automatic boot device. I switched it to UEFI unsecure from UEFI secure, then legacy from UEFI, and the device still doesn't show up in the selections. And yes, I've been trying to get answers from dell support, but they keep basically making stuff up as to why it's not working. The "quoted" me stuff from the manual that simply isn't in there, then made all sorts of nonsensical excuses ("PCIE doesn't support storage"). Really bummed to have to revert back to SATA to get a fault-tolerant boot device.

[n_scott_pearson]

Well, you could always get yourself a replacement motherboard​ that has multiple M.2 sockets...🤯

...S 😷

[BSwid3]

😂

Can I borrow your time machine so I can go back two weeks and purchase a different machine?? 😁