r720xd Issues when expanding storage

[fromage]

I have a r720xd that i've been using to run unraid for many years now with no problems. Before installing unraid I flashed the internal H710 raid controller to IT mode to get everything to work correctly. The front 12 drive bays are filled with 20tb drives, and the cache drives up until now are using m.2 drives via pcie adapters, they have always worked and caused no boot or unraid issues.

 

 

I wanted to add another drive so I purchased a 4tb ssd and this pcie to sata adapter

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09T6VWFQH?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

 

 I originally tried using the 2 internal sata ports until realizing that they're disabled on the r720xd, so I was left trying this.

When I plug that in and attempt to boot, I can see that the SSD is recognized, but the internal unraid usb boot drive is no longer recognized. The server tries a network boot and fails. Checking the bios and bios boot settings only shows the 2 network cards that are installed "Hard-Disk Drive Sequence" is greyed out,. "Internal USB Port" is set to on, boot set to BIOS.

 

I can't use UEFI boot with unraid on the r720, so testing that route is out of the question, but I've been fiddling with this for hours now and I'm nowhere closer to having the usb recognized when the adapter is installed.

 

Hoping someone can anyone shed some insight into this?

Edited August 25 by fromage