Question NVMe on PCIe v1

[pcm81]

I have an old ASUS Rampage III Formula mobo with avaiable 16x PCIe slot. I believe it is still version 1. I am planning to install: ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 4.0 X4 Expansion Card with Kingston NV1 2TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Internal SSD. My question is: is this thing going to run at speed of 4 PCIe v1 lanes or at 16x PCIe v1 lanes? In other words, does the card distribute data across 16 lanes or just map 4 lanes to a drive?

 

[pcm81]

So, i got the grub to list the linux mint 21 by doing grub update from inside mint 19 however the load still fails with an error stating that i need to load the kernel first.

error: no such device: ...
error: file /boot... not found
error: you need to load kernel first.

do you think this is an issue with the Asus hyper or the NVMe itself? I am tempted to try a different NVME adapter, just want something of decent quality... Alternatively can keep trying to see if grub can load enough of linux to see the nvme and then do the handoff.

 

[Tech Junky]

Hmm, then I would swap the adapter or move a storage drive to it and put the new one into a working M2 socket. If you're installing 21 is there a need to keep 19? You can always copy over system files from that install if it's customized.

Or put in a manual entry for the new drive in the etc files.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Up to 2,100MB/s Read, 1,700MB/s Write

You should be seeing equal speeds r/w not so lopsided. Something's not quite right here. I would try another adapter card or at least double check on another slot / reseat the card and M2.

Usually, PCIe 2.0 tops out at about 1600MB/s for a x4 (PCH) connection, so you're actually seeing pretty good performance. Don't know why it's asymmetric though. Maybe something is getting cached?

 

[pcm81]

Hmm, then I would swap the adapter or move a storage drive to it and put the new one into a working M2 socket. If you're installing 21 is there a need to keep 19? You can always copy over system files from that install if it's customized.

Or put in a manual entry for the new drive in the etc files.

Yeah, i am just keeping it until i get mint 21 properly booting on M.2 nvme. my biggest problem now is that GRUB loader cant access nvme drive to load mint 21 from it, but i can see the mint 21 install from within mint 19, so mint has the drivers to see it, just need to get grub to use them.

 

[Tech Junky]

Not really a driver issue is suspect it's the adapter not loading / pcie slot not active until the os loads. There are some other adapters that are bootable. This is where the bootable SATA drive comes into play to bring the slot online. It only takes a couple of seconds for the OS to bring the slot up. There might be some pre-up delay you can add somewhere that waits for the pcie slot to enable before proceeding with boot.

 

[Tech Junky]

Booting to a NVMe via PCIe card. Is it possible?

So I’m making a shift to Linux Mint, and I have an old Z420 workstation headed my way to be my DD. I’ll be putting in an SSD either way, but I am considering an NVMe drive running on a PCIe card since prices are so good now. My question would be, is it possible to install and boot to Linux in...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[pcm81]

I am now able to boot using DUET loader from usb that preloads drives then hands off to grub. Now just need to move it to real bootable drive.