I have a Gigabyte AB350M Gaming 3 and my only NVME slot is being used by my 1TB PNY CS3030 to dual boot Linux and Windows which is on a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo. I currently boot from my PNY from BIOS and it works fine (other than my Samsung not being detected sometimes).
I want to replace my Samsung 850 Evo with Windows onto a 1TB NVME such as the Sabrent Rocket. I’ve seen that you can buy adapters so that you can add extra NVME drives using a spare PCI slot (only using the top one for GPU).
Would I be able to tell grub that Windows is on the PCI to NVME SSD and add it to the list, even though it won’t be visible to the BIOS?
Thanks, if you also have any particular recommendations for PCI to NVME adapters, that would be helpful. I’m currently looking at the cheap single ones on eBay.
You mean things like this?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYCQP38
They work without any problems normally.
Afaik the SSDs on those show up in newer UEFI.
If they don’t show up in the UEFI then don’t worry, they will likely show up in the setup for Windows.
Then there will be a new boot entry if you format them with GPT and install Windows onto the drive.
So I have a PCIe to NVME adapter now and can boot from it. But I’ve run into another problem which is that the speeds are slow through the adaptor. I guess it’s just a limitation of AM4?
PC:
R5 1600
Gigabyte AB350M Gaming 3
GTX 970 (top PCIe slot)
PCIe to NVME adapter (second PCIe slot)
4x8GB RAM
Drives:
Sabrent 1TB in the adaptor
PNY CS3030 1TB in the motherboard
1x SATA SSD, no other drives
The adaptor says it’s PCIe 3.0 x4, this is what it looks like
As far as I’m aware, the second slot which the adaptor is in should be running at x4. My only guess is that it gets split when an NVME is installed into the motherboard?
