M.2 NVMe SSD Not Recognized/Showing Up in BIOS

[rodeab1]

Hello All!

Thank you ahead of time for all of your time and trouble!

THE PROBLEM: BIOS does not recognize M.2 drive, thus impossible to install an OS which, also does not recognize a drive installed.
THE MACHINE: HP T630 Thin Client - Link to Support Page 
THE M.2 DRIVE: Transcend M.2 NVMe PCIe 2280 MF#: TS128GMTE110S

THE STEPS TAKEN: I have tried to reseat the drive. I have used Linux on a bootable thumb drive to see if that could see or fix it. I have tried to find it using the command prompt in PE.

Thank you again!

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

I it seems to me that it the T630 only supports SATA M.2 SSD's not NVMe.

HP t630 Zero Clients | HP® Official Site

I looked up a model in the parts list, and the SSD that comes with it is definitely SATA.

HP PartSurfer

917196-001 - Hewlett-packard (HP) - 128GB TC SOLID-STATE Drive m.2 SS | Impact Computers

[rodeab1]

Thank you, @Paul_Tikkanen.

Wow! I had no idea that place existed to find parts and I hadn't even seen that particular website for thin clients. Well done, thank you for your work. However, I do have a  couple of follow-on questions?

The socket that's on the board is an M Key and the one you showed me is a B+M key. Will it fit and should any SATA-based drive work? Also, the support page says that 128GB is the max, but is that only coming from the factory, is it possible to put in a higher capacity than that in the primary and secondary sockets?

Thank you for your continued help.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

The SATA drive will fit just fine in the socket. 

It just doesn't use the contacts the other notch is going to meet with. 

The contacts will not block the drive from fitting in the slot.

I would agree with you that the storage capacity is just what HP offered in the model series.

You can probably go as high a 1 TB if you wanted to.

I believe the 'Thin Client' philosophy is that you use the HP thin OS or other operating systems that don't need a lot of drive space.

Otherwise folks can also use the HP desktop mini PC's which don't take up any real estate, and you can run full size operating systems and programs on them.

I see some of those thin client PC's coming with 4 GB and 8 GB of storage, and there is no way you could install W10 on one of those drives.

[rodeab1]

Hello Paul_Tikkanen, 

Thank you so much for your quick reply! 

Oh great, that's hopeful, so it'll work and I can put in a rather large capacity if I choose. Perfect!

Given that that's the philosophy it'll be interesting to see what this thing can actually do.

Again, thank you, you are a scholar and a gentleman.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime. 

Glad to have been of assistance. 

Please post back and let us know how your PC's SATA SSD upgrade project went. 

[rodeab1]

Thank you so much for wanting to know how it turns out. Absolutely, I'll get back with you, it'll take a few days for me to find one around here, but I will definitely get back with you.

[rodeab1]

Hey Paul_Tikkanen, 

just wanted to get back to you to let you know that your advice was spot on. I purchased an SSD of the older standard as you suggested and it worked perfectly. The bios instantly picked it up, it registered the higher capacity, partitioned without a hitch, and installed WIN10 in a jiffy, and ran like a charm.

Thank you so much for your time and effort.

The best to you!

Aaron

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime, Aaron.

Glad to have been of assistance.

BTW, I was looking for a small desktop PC I could put on a cart and use it in my TV room and opted to buy a t630 on eBay for $69.00.  It came new with all the accessories.  It also has the built in Intel 3168 AC wifi adapter.

I had a license for W10 Pro, so I installed that, a WD Blue 250 GB M.2 SATA SSD and 16 GB of memory (2 x 8 GB) and the thing works pretty darn good on the full version of W10 Pro.

I changed the graphics memory setting in the BIOS from the default 512 MB to 1 GB to get the best performance I could out of the graphics.

[rodeab1]

Wow, now that's a find, especially with all the bells and whistles! A perfect media rig.

This one I found in a surplus sale at my local university for $10. The only thing it didn't have was the drive (for obvious reasons), but it did come with 8GB of RAM. Oh, you know, I thought that would be nice when I saw the wireless NIC slot, but now you have inspired me, I think I might replace the serial connector (never would use) with that. True, I did the same, changing it to 1GB for graphics.

Sounds like you are quite the guru! Thank you so much for all of your help!