Hello, I’m building a TrueNAS system using an Asus X99 WS/IPMI motherboard with an i7-6850K. I’ve purchased 3x4TB WD Black SN850X M.2 2280 PCIe x4 Gen4 NVMe drives and Icy Box PCIe 4.0 x4 - M.2 PCIe NVMe adapters. The problem is that my motherboard does not detect these drives. When I plug an M.2 drive directly into the motherboard, it works fine. I’ve also tested the adapter on a different PC, and it works there too. Could this be due to a BIOS setting? I’ve tried using just one slot, and a GPU in the same slot works fine. Do you have any clues? Could this be a compatibility issue I’m not aware of? I’ve read the manual several times and found nothing. I’ve also disabled secure boot and CSM, but that didn’t help
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Passive NVMe adapters need bifurcation support from the BIOS. Otherwise just one NVMe drive will show up.
If the BIOS doesnt support at least 4x4x8x (for 3 drives ) bifurcation of the PCIe 16x slot, you have to use cards with a PLX chipset.
But those adapters are for one drive. Im using one drive adapter in one pcie16 slot there is no need for bifurcaion. Ive checked this adaoter on different pc without support for bifurcation and it was working fine
Sorry, I didnt realize, that it was a 1x Card. I quickly looked through the manual of the mainboard and found this:
Maybe you have to install a single card in slot 2.
As far as I can see, an IcyBox holds a single NVMe card, so presumably you have 3 cards and then according to the table above, they need to be installed in slots 2, 3 and 5.
(Not sure why the table refers to VGA/PCIe - it appears to refer to graphics cards, so it may or may not be applicable to these M.2 adapters.)
P.S. Documentation is here
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I’ve checked it with one slot as well. It turned out to be paranormal activity. WD Black NVMe with this adapter works fine on my different pc, this NVMe directly in motherboard works as well, but together with adapter its not detected. I’ve checked different drive in this adapter and suddenly everything is fine… so unfortunatelly I have replaced it with different model. I have no idea why, its not about generation as I’ve cheked different Gen4 drive
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