Trick to recognize NVME

[JavaMan07]

I just got a Thinkcentre M600, 10G9001UUS. I can run OPNsense in live-USB mode, everything works great. But I can't install it. The M.2 slot is M keyed, and my NVME SSD physically fits properly but is not detected. My NVME drive is a b+m key, but only works as NVME. In the BIOS it has settings to enable and disable the SATA controller, the M.2 slot, and SATA 1. All of those are enabled. I can't find any references to NVME in the BIOS.

Does anyone know if there's a trick to getting the M.2 slot to work with NVME? Or does this slot just not work in general on the 10G9?

 

[Sean Ho]

B+M-key drives are usually SATA

 

[abq]

My M600 took SATA version of M.2 SSD, is working fine under Windows 10 Pro. ...I think issue is that these M600's do not support NVME M.2 SSD, as @Sean Ho alluded to above.

 

[JavaMan07]

The Patriot Scorch M2 is very clearly labeled as PCIe Gen3 x2, and served me well in my workstation since I put it together in 2018. The reason the Scorch is B+M keyed is that it only has 2 PCIe lanes, so it will work in the B slot with 2 lanes or the M slot with 4 lanes. Both slots support SATA, at least those are the specs for M.2 slots keys. Lenovo appears to have decided to do things differently.

As my storage needs have grown, it was finally time for me to upgrade the workstation to a WD Black 2TB drive. I was hoping to repurpose the Scorch to the OPNsense box, but looks like I'll be buying a SATA SSD instead.

Something I thought of doing was getting one of those M.2 M key adapters to dual 2.5Gb ethernet ports. But if the M600 is not sporting PCIe lanes at that M.2 slot, I guess that throws out that idea.

 

[Sean Ho]

Yes, it is unfortunately also the case that often B-keyed slots do not expose the PCIe x2 lanes that the should, assuming that only SATA drives will be used. Similarly, E-key WiFi slots often only have one x1, rather than two x1 (e.g., to support the dual Coral TPU). "Standards" ...

 

[RolloZ170]

But if the M600 is not sporting PCIe lanes at that M.2 slot, I guess that throws out that idea.

thing about no NVMe but Ahci
first computers with M.2 supported only Ahci protocol SSD
there are two sm951, one Ahci(MZHxxx) and one NVMe(MZVxxx.