[Question] Is it possible or not ?

[FMartel]

Hello community, I have an old rig (GA990FXA-UD3, Rev.1, AMD FX8350, 24GB DDR3, R9 380, Munchkin 250GB SSD [main]...) that I'd like to upgrade with an M.2 Add-on card and Install an OS on it (Win or Lin).

My question is : Is it possible ton install an OS on the M.2 drive, knowing it's an expansion card.

 

Thank you.

[2FA]

Yes, it will be like any other drive.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What drive? Normally those old amd boards dont' support nvme boot so you can't boot from it, and would need something like a usb stick for /boot to be stored.

 

Why a m.2 nvme drive though? Its not worth the extra, esp with your slow cpu and platform.

[FMartel]

Might be slow for you, but it suits my needs

I thought of the WD Black 256GB (WDS256G1X0C)

[Daniel644]

it would be a complete waste of money on a system that old, just get any regular 2.5" SSD.

[FMartel]

Ok, my system is old... I GET IT ! but it still doesn't answer my initial question, Is it possible to install an OS on an nVME expansion card

[AngryBeaver]

You can do several things. You can get a m.2 enclosure which will make it act as any other SSD drive. You will probably lose some speed here due to the sata interface.

 

You can buy a PCI-E m.2 card. This would allow you to mount the m.2 to it and get very good speeds. The downside is this might steal some of your pci-e to cpu lanes. So your gpu would be running at 8x instead of 16x

[Daniel644]

1 hour ago, FMartel said:

Ok, my system is old... I GET IT ! but it still doesn't answer my initial question, Is it possible to install an OS on an nVME expansion card

recheck your board, unless i'm seeing the wrong board online it looks like the motherboard itself has an M.2 slot on it that supports NVME, no need for an expansion card, this will greatly increase the likely hood it would be able to use it as a boot drive.

[FMartel]

@Daniel644 I did recheck the board, and unfortunately (for me) there's non M.2 slot... I think the tech wan't even out at this time...

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-990FXA-UD3-rev-10#sp

 

@AngryBeaver Thanks for the tip ! But, what I'm looking for is for the nVme to run as a first (like old IDE, First Master xD) Bootable SSD with my OS on it, so I could take the current primary SSD and place it somwhere else. (to an older rig, to serve as a media player)