M.2 NVME installation in mini PCIe slot w/adapter

[thechurchofcage]

Dear all!

 

I'm fairly new to the PC modding scene and I'm particularly fond of collecting slightly older hardware - mostly things I was lusting over as a teenager and couldn't afford until now. An example of this is my beloved Vaio TZ (VGN-TZ31WN... gotta love Sony's classy naming scheme), which is sadly hopeless obsolete nowadays.

 

In order to inject more life into it, I thought I would try installing an NVME SSD - specifically this one, an SK Hynix 256GB M.2 2230 affair - paired with an M.2 to mPCIe adapter (from here) - into its single mini PCIe slot currently occupied by the WiFi card. I'm aware that I'm limited to 1x PCIE 1.0 (or 2.0?) speeds, but even that would be around twice as fast as the current PATA limit.

 

There's surprisingly little information about how to do this, with perhaps the closest thing to a guide coming from here. I gave it a go anyway and the device completely failed to show up. There are a myriad of reasons why it could have gone wrong (not least of which is the Chinese adapter...) but what steps can I take to eliminate probable causes? The PC is running Windows 10 with all updates as well as the "latest" BIOS (from 2009). I don't know if there is anything I can do in Windows though as the device does not show up in diskpart, diskmgmt, device manager or elsewhere. I have tried removing and reinserting several times. I have been unable to test the SSD and adapter so far, but am planning a test sometime soon in other systems (one with an M.2 NVME slot and another with an mSATA slot to see if it can convert a separate SATA M.2 SSD).

 

 

I don't suppose I could ask for some advice? Thanks very much!

Edited January 21, 2020 by thechurchofcage
Added photos

[Kisai]

If the system bios does not list SSD, then it will only work once Windows has booted, in which case you will likely have to use the Intel RST driver if it supports that configuration. But I should mention that any pre-haswell system does not support M2 in Bios.

[thechurchofcage]

16 hours ago, Kisai said:

If the system bios does not list SSD, then it will only work once Windows has booted, in which case you will likely have to use the Intel RST driver if it supports that configuration. But I should mention that any pre-haswell system does not support M2 in Bios.

Thanks for the reply! I expected that the SSD would not be detected in BIOS, but it is not detected in Windows either. It doesn't show up in Device Manager or anywhere. Do you know if there's some way I can perform some sort of hardware search for it in Windows?

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, thechurchofcage said:

Thanks for the reply! I expected that the SSD would not be detected in BIOS, but it is not detected in Windows either. It doesn't show up in Device Manager or anywhere. Do you know if there's some way I can perform some sort of hardware search for it in Windows?

In theory, it's just a PCIe device like any other one. However it's really only supported in UEFI Bios's, so if the machine is older than that, SOL. 

 

With that said, there are "client" NVMe drivers that might be usable, but they're device specific.

 

Intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29172?v=t

 

Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

 

At any rate, if you can't get it to work, you might have to resort to a SATA SSD.

 

[thechurchofcage]

16 hours ago, Kisai said:

In theory, it's just a PCIe device like any other one. However it's really only supported in UEFI Bios's, so if the machine is older than that, SOL. 

 

With that said, there are "client" NVMe drivers that might be usable, but they're device specific.

 

Intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29172?v=t

 

Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

 

At any rate, if you can't get it to work, you might have to resort to a SATA SSD.

 

Ooh, so I have to find software to make it compatible with legacy BIOS systems? Thanks for the help! I'll post an update when/if I find something. I might have to go straight ahead with Clover bootloader.

[TheMadMadMad]

If you wanna do it just for the reason of doing it, then keep on trying,

but if you just want the performance boost you gotta evaluate if the additional speed from an NVME SSD really makes a diffrence. 
The boost you get from switching from an HDD to an SSD is the decrease of acces times. 
The diffrence between NVME and SATA SSD's is just not as siginificant especially if youre running over a single pcie lane (im pretty sure its PCIE 1)

My recomendation would be to just use a SATA SSD, im all into modding just for the sake of it. But im sure there are no real performance gains that are even remotely comparable to the hassle.

Its just an old machine, running a 1,2 ghz Intel Core 2 duo with DDR2, your phone probably has more compute power

[thechurchofcage]

17 hours ago, TheMadMadMad said:

If you wanna do it just for the reason of doing it, then keep on trying,

but if you just want the performance boost you gotta evaluate if the additional speed from an NVME SSD really makes a diffrence. 
The boost you get from switching from an HDD to an SSD is the decrease of acces times. 
The diffrence between NVME and SATA SSD's is just not as siginificant especially if youre running over a single pcie lane (im pretty sure its PCIE 1)

My recomendation would be to just use a SATA SSD, im all into modding just for the sake of it. But im sure there are no real performance gains that are even remotely comparable to the hassle.

Its just an old machine, running a 1,2 ghz Intel Core 2 duo with DDR2, your phone probably has more compute power

Haha, you're right about my phone being more powerful but old tech is more fun! The VAIO doesn't actually have a SATA interface, so sadly that's not an option. I do have an mSATA to ZIF adapter but I couldn't get it to work, and even if I did I would be limited to 133MB/s, which trounces the HDD but is still pretty crap. Even PCIe 1.0 is nearly twice as fast and I do think I've gotten it to work...

[thechurchofcage]

On 1/23/2020 at 3:49 AM, Kisai said:

In theory, it's just a PCIe device like any other one. However it's really only supported in UEFI Bios's, so if the machine is older than that, SOL. 

 

With that said, there are "client" NVMe drivers that might be usable, but they're device specific.

 

Intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29172?v=t

 

Samsung: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/

 

At any rate, if you can't get it to work, you might have to resort to a SATA SSD.

 

Thanks for the advice! It turns out that the M.2 to PCIe adapter wasn't working, so I got a replacement and the drive showed up in Windows fully functional! I had a go at installing the OpenFabrics NVME driver but I didn't see much of a performance increase, since the bottleneck is probably the interface at this level. I should point out that a SATA SSD isn't an option as the VAIO only has PATA. I can use an mSATA to ZIF adapter but I would still be limited to PATA speeds.

[thechurchofcage]

So, UPDATE! It turns out that the reason the SSD wasn't showing up was because of the adapter! I got a replacement one that worked straight away and the SSD showed up in This PC as an ordinary drive. After updating the SSD's firmware using a utility from Dell, I'm getting sequential read/write speeds of ~180-200MB/s, close to the limit of PCIe 1.0 and much higher than the theoretical cap for the machine's PATA interface! I will post the full DiskMark results soon. I followed the instructions in this guide in order to install Windows onto it in EFI mode and actually boot into it! Performance is considerably snappier than with an HDD (duh) but I'm running into BSOD's whenever Windows Update runs...

 

Will post another update soon!

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, thechurchofcage said:

So, UPDATE! It turns out that the reason the SSD wasn't showing up was because of the adapter! I got a replacement one that worked straight away and the SSD showed up in This PC as an ordinary drive. After updating the SSD's firmware using a utility from Dell, I'm getting sequential read/write speeds of ~180-200MB/s, close to the limit of PCIe 1.0 and much higher than the theoretical cap for the machine's PATA interface! I will post the full DiskMark results soon. I followed the instructions in this guide in order to install Windows onto it in EFI mode and actually boot into it! Performance is considerably snappier than with an HDD (duh) but I'm running into BSOD's whenever Windows Update runs...

 

Will post another update soon!

Oh nice! I knew it should be possible.

 

As a big FYI, Windows 1909, has some odd iRST issues (NVMe driver) so I think Dell may have tweaked something. PCIe speed should probably net you 250-300MB/sec if it's 4 lane. Though I suppose there are other bottlnecks involved.

 

run bluescreenview to check the crashing driver to see if it's not something else responsible. Given this is not exactly a supported configuration.

[gercour]

On 1/29/2020 at 3:11 AM, thechurchofcage said:

So, UPDATE! It turns out that the reason the SSD wasn't showing up was because of the adapter! I got a replacement one that worked straight away and the SSD showed up in This PC as an ordinary drive. After updating the SSD's firmware using a utility from Dell, I'm getting sequential read/write speeds of ~180-200MB/s, close to the limit of PCIe 1.0 and much higher than the theoretical cap for the machine's PATA interface! I will post the full DiskMark results soon. I followed the instructions in this guide in order to install Windows onto it in EFI mode and actually boot into it! Performance is considerably snappier than with an HDD (duh) but I'm running into BSOD's whenever Windows Update runs...

 

Will post another update soon!

Hello, I'm having some trouble finding the right adapter for a NVMe to miniPCIe, could you please give me the reference or the link to buy the adapter?

 

Thanks a lot!!

[thechurchofcage]

On 8/19/2020 at 11:21 AM, gercour said:

Hello, I'm having some trouble finding the right adapter for a NVMe to miniPCIe, could you please give me the reference or the link to buy the adapter?

 

Thanks a lot!!

Here you go, man: https://www.amazon.com/Ableconn-MPEX-134B-Mini-PCIe-Adapter/dp/B0779727FY/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_147_t_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PFYV6DMNZ94QEX3QD42D

They're a little pricey, though - I think there might be other ones that work as well, but I'm not going to order twenty different adapters to see which work and which don't!

[AveryFreeman]

This is a great thread, thanks for sharing.  I saw the Mini-PCIe to M.2 adapters for NVMe drives on eBay, and I was like "That's not really possible, is it?"

 

Do you have any NVMe benchmark speeds you could share with us?  Did you ever find out if the slot is 1.0 or 2.0?

 

BTW I've used Clover to boot from NVMe in a desktop PCIe slot w/ adapter, in case you're interested: https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f50-Guide-NVMe-boot-without-modding-your-UEFI-BIOS-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

 

Usually Clover is used for making hackintoshes, so most guides are Mac-centric, but you can make a Clover boot disk using Boot Disk Utility (link in guide). Booting using an NVMe requires a usb flash drive (or other drive) for bootloader, but you can take it out until you're ready to reboot/turn on the computer again...  Or you could put it on the EFI partition of the PATA drive.