2nd hand U.2 SSD usage problem

[randomname]

StarTech is usually very professional about this, so I expected that there's a note in the product description about U.2 incompatibility, and there is:


In general, U.2 hosts are compatible with U.2 and U.3 drives. U.3 hosts are only compatible with U.3 drives. Depending on the implementation, U.3 hosts could actually be trimode with SATA/SAS/NVMe, but with these adapters it's always NVMe only, obviously.

Indeed, thank you very much!

 

[randomname]

Maybe get the 1-slot "dumb" card just for debugging purposes, it doesn't cost much. Like @Tech Junky said there are more options for Gen4 with Oculink/MCIO riser cards if you have physical space to mount the drives someplace else than PCIe slot.

Taking your advice, I ordered a dumb PCIe x4 -> U.2 card for debugging purposes. And it did indeed work. For the first time, I completed a run of CrystalDiskMark.


I will continue to investigate 2xU.2 cards (because I really do need two U.2 slots), but at least for now I can probably confirm that it's not the drive, but the adapter.

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[randomname]

Hm...I might have posted too quickly. The drive did work for much longer than any other adapter card I tested (and I tested a few) but still...

Still not ruling out the adapter board, the ones I have is still a bit crap (I can only get crappy ones with next-day delivery)