3 pin charger, SSD questions

[Patricia1066]

I like to dual boot using two drives; seems impractical in this case though. 

I have two m.2 sata drives that could have been useful, just need a card that will fit on the pci-e.

Cheapest solution for now is to adapt the DVD drive to a SSD 2.5 drive, which is what I will do. 

[DGroves]

unless you are using diffrent os's then creating 2 diffrent user profiles/passwords is the way to go

[Patricia1066]

I have received the PC now, and the system reports that there are two PCIe slots - x16 and x4. 

There is a DV drive and one HDD drive and no other SATA connections. 

I decided to take your advice and buy a PCIe board with 4 SATA headers, Chipset: Marvell 88SE9215. This uses the PCIe x4 slot.

My preferred solution, a pcie board that seats M.2 sata drives, is unsatisfactory as even the PCIe boards that support M.2 SATA require a SATA connection for data and power. 

Those small M.2 SATA drives are available on ebay at the moment for £20 or so. Well recommended as boot drives if your system support them.

And per your comment, I do plan to have a few different OS' on my system. 

[DGroves]

the marvel 9215 chip is a old (but cheap) and very slow pcie x1 card, which i did not recomend the newer 88SE9230 is a much faster card using a pcie x2 interface (it's almost four times faster in sustaned read/write)

https://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-4-port-Controller-SI-PEX40057/dp/B00AZ9T264/ref=pd_sbs_147_6?_encodi...

[Patricia1066]

The seller really messed up, saying that it uses x2 pcie lanes, while it is based on SATA 2 and with 1lane only, but as I just need one SATA drive, 3 Gbps should be adequate for the SSD.

It looks reasonable quality too

[Patricia1066]

The card Marvell 9235 is pcie 2.0 and handles SATA iii. I have configured it and the attached drive is working, and visible in the OS windows 10. 

It isn't seen in the BIOS however.

Nor is pcie SATA a bootable option. Only boots from usb and file.

It looks like the only SATA port to boot from is on the motherboard.

I have disabled secure boot, Uefi enabled. 

I was thinking of configuring the boot sequence with bcdedit. It has quick boot disabled already.

[Patricia1066]

I needed to enable legacy and disable secure boot. Now I can boot from the pcie SATA disks.

[DGroves]

the Marvell 9235 card has it's own bios, and it will breifly flash the key combo nessary to get into the marvel card bios,........

if this flashes by to quick to read it's CTRL + M key (press both keys together) this msg only is visable for about 3/4 sec so you have to be quick

you can also hold down the ctrl key, and tap the "M" key over and over very quickly while the system is booting

you should also have gotten a disk with the card manual (which has how to enter the card bios) and a "MBU" program which also allows card configuration options while in windows

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/A1rDIXuyH4L.pdf

[Patricia1066]

I found a manual v2.1 for the PEX40062 card on syba which does not have the management utility, and says that this card is not a RAID card.  SI-PEX40064

I tried to install the MSU exe file from the CD that came with the card, but on reboot no drive was accessible to be booted, and BIOS didnt start. I removed the card, rebooted a few times, and got it to load with just the motherboard drive connected. 

I replaced the card and drive and when the system booted up, I had the correct Marvell driver in Storage and Marvell RAID Virtual drive in Device Manager/System. 

My HP BIOS has virtualisation, secure boot and legacy all disabled. I briefly enabled legacy to allow the HP bios to see the PCIE card drive, but it continues to list it as a boot drive even now legacy is disabled. 

Would MSU work if I enabled virtualisation? I dont want to risk the total breakdown again as you can imagine, so I'm inclined to leave well alone.

[Patricia1066]

Just a quick update, since installing the PEX-40062 card I have 2x SSD drives and 1 DVD drive connected.

I cannot boot from a drive on the PCIe card, so I use the two SATA connections on the motherboard for my drives. I am running W10 and elementary OS and its all working well.