Question Can someone recommend M.2 pcie adapter cards to experiment with as far as bootability in older boards.

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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your board also needs to support UEFI nVME booting.
I Believe this feature came out on Intel After Z97 chipset, or basically limited support on Intel processors which use DDR3 (without hacking Bios), and mostly 99% of all that use DDR4..
 
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razel

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May 14, 2002
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There isn't much to m2 to PCI-e adapter cards. They do not convert the data, just the form factor. I use generic ebay ones for laptop mPCI-e to m2 and Vantec for the PCIe to m2. The generic ebay laptop ones are just PCIe x 1 lane and they still work fine. You'll still reap the efficiency and latency benefits.

It's possible to boot from nvme drives in systems that don't support via the BIOS. For EFI BIOS', I use Clover EFI. For non-EFI, I think what I use is called DUET. However, Clover EFI can work in non-EFI BIOS'. You boot into Clover/DUET EFI shell off either USB drive or SATA which then continues boot off the NVME drive.

Only issue I found is with non-EFI BIOSs in laptops is that resuming from hibernate doesn't always work unless the BIOS is in a 'shut down' state.