PCI x16 M.2 Expansion + Samsung EVO 970 SSD


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Motherboard: Asrock Z370 Extreme4 version P4.20

Unraid: unRAID server Plus, version 6.8.0

Expansion: Orico M.2 NVME PCle3.0 x16 M.2 SSD Expansion Card

M.2: Samsung EVO 970 500GB NVMe M.2

 

Hi folks

 

I am looking to free up a couple of SATA ports on my motherboard in order to add extra storage to my array.  Currently I have 2x older SATA SSD's running cache and as an unassigned device.  The idea is to replace these with PCI M.2 devices, and as such I have 3x of the Orico expansion cards that I mention above.  I have 1x NVMe M.2 SSD so I'm trying to install that one for now to use as another unassigned device.  Reason I'm using PCI expansions is because even though I have 2x M.2 slots on my motherboard, they share SATA lanes which I am using with spinning disks. 

 

For some reason this is recognised correctly in my EFI config but not in Unraid.  Has anyone run into this before?  I can't imagine there's any drivers required and the firmware is up to date on the Z370.  Is there anything I'm missing to get this to show up?

 

Interestingly I can see the following in the System Devices section of Unraid: 

[144d:a808] 02:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM981/PM981/PM983

 

But also some warnings and errors in the syslog related to NVMe:

 

kernel: Buffer I/O error on dev nvme0n1p1, logical block 16259, async page read

kernel: nvme nvme0: failed to set APST feature (-19

 

Let me know if you need any more info to help, thanks

 

image345.jpg

mimir-diagnostics-20200110-2058.zip

Edited by gehenna
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6 hours ago, gehenna said:

I can't imagine there's any drivers

No drivers required, those adapters are transparent to the OS, though there could always be problem with it, or the NVMe device, it's failing to initialize, some times they have issues with power states, you can try this:

 

Main GUI page click on the flash drive, scroll down to "syslinux configuration" and add this to your default boot option, after "append"

 

nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=0

 

Then reboot, but doubt it will help in this case, next step would be to try the NVMe device on a different adapter or onboard.

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The nvme boot option you provided worked! I can now see the SSD in my unassigned devices.  Fantastic, thank you!

 

Re the last question about EFI mode vs Legacy, is that something to be concerned about or should I just ignore it since everything else about my server is functioning fine (or fine enough for me to not tell otherwise)

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