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Will PCI-e SSD card be bootable on all PCI-e motherboards?

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debs3759

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On older boards with PCI-e, will a PCI-e SSD card be recognised as bootable device by the BIOS? I am setting up some benchmarking systems, and for the socket 775 and later, I am wondering if I can get faster boot times than SATA gives (and faster data access when benchmarks benefit from that). Basically looking to optimise all the parts that make up the test systems.
 
debs3759 said:
On older boards with PCI-e, will a PCI-e SSD card be recognised as bootable device by the BIOS? I am setting up some benchmarking systems, and for the socket 775 and later, I am wondering if I can get faster boot times than SATA gives (and faster data access when benchmarks benefit from that). Basically looking to optimise all the parts that make up the test systems.
Click to expand...
Back in the day I used a Revo Drive x2 Ocz , it was 4xpciex and I got every system I tried it in to boot from it, 775,am3+, and a few others like sk1151 without much trouble.
But it is not like a sata or hdd, the drive controller won't automatically get recognized and installed.
I needed a so called F2 driver, a driver to install the controller and the drive during windows install.

None of it's guaranteed to work on Every board though and I have read of people not having my luck.

And yes 100io /s 500Mb /s makes a big difference on an old rig.
 
Great, thanks. I'll be testing about 50 boards, probably half are S775 and later, so will take the chance. I'll make sure F2 drivers for Win 7 are available first though :)
 
theoneandonlymrk said:
Back in the day I used a Revo Drive x2 Ocz , it was 4xpciex and I got every system I tried it in to boot from it, 775,am3+, and a few others like sk1151 without much trouble.
But it is not like a sata or hdd, the drive controller won't automatically get recognized and installed.
I needed a so called F2 driver, a driver to install the controller and the drive during windows install.

None of it's guaranteed to work on Every board though and I have read of people not having my luck.

And yes 100io /s 500Mb /s makes a big difference on an old rig.
Click to expand...


That's a little bit different than modern PCI-E SSDs. The RevoDrive x2 used a AHCI storage controller. It was like what an add-on SATA card would have. In fact, the RevoDrive x2 was a frankenstein of card that combined a bunch of things into one package. It used a PCI-E to PCI-X chip that was connected to a PCI-X to SATA AHCI RAID controller chip that was connected to 4(or 2 depending on capacity) SATA SSDs.

Modern PCI-E SSDs on the other hand don't use AHCI anymore, they use NVMe controllers. The NVMe controllers won't be recognized as bootable by some older motherboards.
 
newtekie1 said:
That's a little bit different than modern PCI-E SSDs. The RevoDrive x2 used a AHCI storage controller. It was like what an add-on SATA card would have. In fact, the RevoDrive x2 was a frankenstein of card that combined a bunch of things into one package. It used a PCI-E to PCI-X chip that was connected to a PCI-X to SATA AHCI RAID controller chip that was connected to 4(or 2 depending on capacity) SATA SSDs.

Modern PCI-E SSDs on the other hand don't use AHCI anymore, they use NVMe controllers. The NVMe controllers won't be recognized as bootable by some older motherboards.
Click to expand...
Fair point, I don't think they're allllll nvme though.
 
After looking more into it, a SATA 3 (or 3.2?) M.2 card with a PCI-e adapter might be a good option. I'll look into how cheap I can get one of each to compare :)
 
debs3759 said:
After looking more into it, a SATA 3 (or 3.2?) M.2 card with a PCI-e adapter might be a good option. I'll look into how cheap I can get one of each to compare :)
Click to expand...

At that point, why not just get a SATA SSD? You'll get the same performance and less hassle...
 
I'm just looking for what might be the fastest options for different platforms. I'm just thinking through my keyboard :)
 
The performance will be the same. It’s limited by the interface. The only way to bypass SATA speeds is with 1) RAID or 2) NVMe. NVMe is only possible on X79 with modification as it requires UEFI. It can be a pain to get it working as well.
 
If I put a SATA 3 controller card in a system that only has SATA or SATA 2, will that be bootable at SATA3 speeds?
 
theoneandonlymrk said:
Back in the day I used a Revo Drive x2 Ocz , it was 4xpciex and I got every system I tried it in to boot from it, 775,am3+, and a few others like sk1151 without much trouble.
But it is not like a sata or hdd, the drive controller won't automatically get recognized and installed.
I needed a so called F2 driver, a driver to install the controller and the drive during windows install.

None of it's guaranteed to work on Every board though and I have read of people not having my luck.

And yes 100io /s 500Mb /s makes a big difference on an old rig.
Click to expand...
wasn't it called the F6 driver ?
 
I don't think spending £5 extra to make a drive run faster than the motherboard supports is a waste of money :)
 
debs3759 said:
If I put a SATA 3 controller card in a system that only has SATA or SATA 2, will that be bootable at SATA3 speeds?
Click to expand...

It depends on the card and if it has a bootable OpROM.
 
NVMe is possible on Sandy and later UEFI platform via mod (just add .dxe to UEFI).
For older ones, you need 3-rd party boot (like DUET or Clover).
I tested everything with 64-bit support.
 
agent_x007 said:
NVMe is possible on Sandy and later UEFI platform via mod (just add .dxe to UEFI).
For older ones, you need 3-rd party boot (like DUET or Clover).
I tested everything with 64-bit support.
Click to expand...

I will look into the UEFI updates for SB and later, thanks. I'll google DUET and Clover later. I'll be using Win 7 x64 on all systems these drives get used in.
 
For max compatibility with older mobo's find a Revo Drive x2 Ocz as not all PCIe M.2 adapter cards are bootable and half the time they don't tell you in the device description
 
Or get a pciex adapter(x2x4) With a plx chip ,doesn't the Asus one have it, put two sata m.2 drives in it and that should work.
Possibly raided.
 
FWIW, you can still have a C:\ or root (/) disk that's on an NVMe card, but not have a system that supports booting from NVMe. You only need one disk that can be detected at boot time and the EFI partition will get installed there. It's the same deal with Linux and /boot (plus the EFI partition.) So if you have another smaller drive, like a SATA SSD, you can can use that for the bootloader and still have the rest of the system on an NVMe drive. In fact if I ever get around to redoing my setup, that's what I will be doing with my own NVMe card if I do it before I replace the entire platform.
 
Athlonite said:
For max compatibility with older mobo's find a Revo Drive x2 Ocz as not all PCIe M.2 adapter cards are bootable and half the time they don't tell you in the device description
Click to expand...

It would probably be easier today to just go buy a PCI-E RAID card and attach a few SATA SSDs to it in RAID 0, since that's all the RevoDrive was anyway.
 
debs3759 said:
If I put a SATA 3 controller card in a system that only has SATA or SATA 2, will that be bootable at SATA3 speeds?
Click to expand...


Athlonite said:
For max compatibility with older mobo's find a Revo Drive x2 Ocz as not all PCIe M.2 adapter cards are bootable and half the time they don't tell you in the device description
Click to expand...

Make sure you download and Install the drivers before you install the Revodrive2. They are still pretty expensive though. Most of the time you can find a PCI_E expansion card that you can put an SSD and NVME drive into. Using the PCI_E bus you may be able to get full speed out of the NVME but you probably would have to migrate Windows to that after installing the OS on another drive. Windows 10 does have native support for NVME.
 
kapone32 said:
Make sure you download and Install the drivers before you install the Revodrive2. They are still pretty expensive though. Most of the time you can find a PCI_E expansion card that you can put an SSD and NVME drive into. Using the PCI_E bus you may be able to get full speed out of the NVME but you probably would have to migrate Windows to that after installing the OS on another drive. Windows 10 does have native support for NVME.
Click to expand...

How do you install drivers to a boot drive before installing it?

I have not yet found a low cost bootable PCI-E card for NVME drives. I am hoping I will find a reasonable price bootable PCI-E/NVME adapter suitable for a non UEFI system. Otherwise I'll be using the DUET loader that agent_x007 mentioned, on systems that can boot from USB.

Aquinus said:
FWIW, you can still have a C:\ or root (/) disk that's on an NVMe card, but not have a system that supports booting from NVMe. You only need one disk that can be detected at boot time and the EFI partition will get installed there. It's the same deal with Linux and /boot (plus the EFI partition.) So if you have another smaller drive, like a SATA SSD, you can can use that for the bootloader and still have the rest of the system on an NVMe drive. In fact if I ever get around to redoing my setup, that's what I will be doing with my own NVMe card if I do it before I replace the entire platform.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I have only ever set up an OS on a drive the BIOS can see, so it is good to know that is not the only option.
 
debs3759 said:
On older boards with PCI-e, will a PCI-e SSD card be recognised as bootable device by the BIOS? I am setting up some benchmarking systems, and for the socket 775 and later, I am wondering if I can get faster boot times than SATA gives (and faster data access when benchmarks benefit from that). Basically looking to optimise all the parts that make up the test systems.
Click to expand...
No, especially if NVMe. Only X99/Z97 and newer on Intel support NVMe. AMD, not sure when support started.

If it just a SATA host controller, maybe. You'll have to check if the board has boot support. Some cards that claim to support booting may not boot via UEFI. Only have to worry about UEFI on much newer boards.

To be perfectly clear, LGA775 does not support UEFI nor NVMe. Both technologies came later.


debs3759 said:
How do you install drivers to a boot drive before installing it?
Click to expand...
Depends on OS. Windows XP, you had to press F6 to high-load a SATA/RAID driver before setup begins, otherwise it won't detect the card.

Windows 7 and newer, when you select to install which disk to install the OS on, you can click on "have disk" and point it to a USB stick or CD with drivers on it. It will then refresh the disk list and you can proceed as normal.



An older SATA SSD will have broad compatibility with these older systems. Especially Windows 7 got updates to TRIM rather than defrag SSDs so it won't destroy them. You won't have to jump through any hoops to get it working.
 
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