Author Topic: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe  (Read 7006 times)

Per E. Johannessen

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Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« on: August 07, 2019, 03:18:50 pm »
Planning to buy a new ThinkCentre or ThinkStation which comes with Win pre-installed on a M.2 SATA or NVMe.
Will add an extra SATA SSD and connect it to one of the motherboard's SATA connectors and install Airboot and ArcaOS
on this one.
Don't know what kind of BIOS these systems use, but hopefully it can be set to "legacy".

If so, will Airboot be able to boot Win from the M.2 or NVMe?

Remy

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2019, 03:27:46 pm »
I had problems trying to like this (but it was a win7 using 2 install partition)
My option was to use bios pf11 and select boot drive.

Per E. Johannessen

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2019, 05:18:22 pm »
On what kind of disk was Win7 installed?

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2019, 07:12:49 pm »
Hi Per.

I had discussed something on a previous post trying to learn more about M.2.

What I understood is:
- M.2 is the only form factor.
- NVMe require special drivers that we don't have on OS/2 or ArcaOS. NVMe SSD cards are not working on OS/2.
- M.2 SATA SSD does work on OS/2 according to some reports (I do not have a M.2 SATA SSD).

As far as I understood, there is also an important thing to know about the computer hardware and the M.2 port. Some mainboards are NVMe only and some others support NVMe cards and SATA cards.  I had an issue with my brother's machine (using Windows) that he bought a SATA M.2 card and was not compatible because his M.2 port only supported NVMe.

This are my two cents to this conversation.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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Per E. Johannessen

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2019, 10:45:01 pm »
Yes, I noticed that thread but was hoping that someone had done some tests recently  ::)
Driver for NVMe is on the Arca Noae "to do" list, however I can't wait for that one to be released.
Probably I'll just buy one model that also supports my old SATA SSD's. If Win10 comes preloaded on a NVMe
and Airboot can't boot it I will just transfer the Win10 installation to another SATA SSD.

Remy

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2019, 01:55:16 am »
On what kind of disk was Win7 installed?

SSD PCIe (not NvMe) on the maindoard M.2 slot.
(the port support all 3 SSD type including NvMe bujt due win7 is installed on it, it was preferable to choice a not NvMe SSD and use PCIe for a faster speed (>1000MB)   
« Last Edit: August 08, 2019, 01:58:51 am by Remy »

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2019, 03:51:15 pm »
I don't have an answer for the M.2 SATA, but I do have a current ThinkCentre M720s running. However, it's got serious issues you should know about.

The USB is completely non-functional. You will not even boot the install media until you add real USB 2.0 hardware.
The machine cannot reboot. It hangs instead. A fix is being developed by Arca Noae.
Sound does not work. You should be prepared to use a USB Audio adapter.
The installer will not see the network unless you use ArcaOS 5.0.4 or later.


http://www.blondeguy.com/computer/humbopeep.html

Moderator's Note: Neil, I fixed your link, it was pointing to a local file.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2019, 03:56:54 pm by Martin Iturbide »
Expert consulting for ArcaOS, OS/2 and eComStation
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Per E. Johannessen

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Re: Airboot / M.2 SATA and/or PCI NVMe
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2019, 09:04:01 pm »
Thanks for the link. The models I've looked at have two USB 2.0 ports and up to 8 USB 3.0 ports.
Good to know about the Startek USB 2.0 PCIe, so with that I can even look at systems that only have USB 3.0.