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Question If my Bios does not support bifurcation can I still access all 4 NVMe drives on x4/x4/x4/x4 PCIe card from an EFI system partition?

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May 11, 2024
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Hi! This is my first message at Tom. :)


I have an older rack server (Cisco UCS M200 M2) and I want to add 4 NVMe drives to it on a PCIe card. The common ones (at least the cheap ones) today seem to basically plug the drive to a 16x PCI under this so called x4/x4/x4/x4 configuration.

I've read that if my computer does not support bifurcation it will only see the first drive and not the other 3. But that is just the Bios, not the EFI Booter or Windows. So I guess the question is whether the rest of the drives become visible to the boot loader and the OS even if they are not supported by the Bios?

What I'm thinking is splitting each drive into 2 partitions, a smaller partition of 200MB and a larger one with the rest. Then I would define the first small partition as EFI system partition with a boot loader, bunch the rest of the small partitions as Swap and then bunch the larger ones as Raid 0 for the OS and data and run Windows 10 on that.

Is this possible or do I HAVE TO get a more expensive card with PLX controllers?

PS
A word on my computer for the nerds 😉
My PC is a pet project where I converted a Cisco UCS M200 M2 rack computer into a PC. It's only 1U in height so I had to buy a PCIe riser module from another model and attack it with a hack-saw to make it fit. Then I added an NVIDIA 19xx video card onto it and attacked the lid of the chassis with a hack-saw to be able to close it. Then I added a USB card because it only has 2 USB ports.
It has 12 memory modules with 200GB of RAM running on 6 data buses. It also has 2 CPUs with 6 cores and 2 threads totaling in 24 virtual processors. It also has a Raid card with 4x1TB drives which are currently causing ALOT of Hardware Faults slowing down my monster.
It is also LOUD as heck! :/

Regards,
Þorsteinn Sigurðsson
 
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I've read that if my computer does not support bifurcation it will only see the first drive and not the other 3. But that is just the Bios, not the EFI Booter or Windows. So I guess the question is whether the rest of the drives become visible to the boot loader and the OS even if they are not supported by the Bios?
If BIOS doesn't see those drives, then windows will not see them either.
 
If BIOS doesn't see those drives, then windows will not see them either.
That is not quite true. The Bios on this computer does not see the USB card I use so I cannot use it to access the Bios setup and have to use built in USB ports but It works fine after windows boots.
The NVIDIA graphic card is also not supported by cisco but it is seen in the bios and if I try to make it a primary display in bios-setup it will hang the computer SO BAD that I'll have to remove the cmos battery to get it running again. As long as I don't do that it works fine as a primary display in Windows. :)
This is what I'm wandering about this 4x4x4x4x tec. If I get it to boot, does it become compatible then?
 
If BIOS doesn't see those drives, then windows will not see them either.
... also I like to use Advanced SystemCare with DriverBoost and it had this brand new driver update (probably from Cisco). I installed it and it completely trashed my computer so I had to do a system restore! 😀
I haven't bothered checking but I bet that these Cisco drivers DO NOT like that Chinese 7-port USB card I put in the computer. 😀
 
Actually, multiplied by 6.

4 drives.
RAID controller.
PCIe card to hold the drives.

RAID is almost never a good idea in the consumer space.
RAID 0 + SSD, even less so.
Actually I was running 4 1TB SAS drives with Raid 0 with a PCI Raid card and it broke!
But my increase in risk is 0%! 😀
I've replaced 1 drive but havent installed a system on it and I'm thinking, why not? Why not get NVME drives? You know the seek time is practically 0. 😀

Otherwise SAS RULES! I've personally seen system monitor briefly show 25GB transfer rate, (ONCE!) however that is supposed to happen. There is a cache involved in these measurements.

Anyhow this machine is designed to serve hundreds of people simultaneously.
It actually takes longer to boot Windows than my old gaming PC which I assume is a single process with very few threads. It has a DDR3 memory (but with 6 data buses). IT HAS A RAIDED RAM SYSTEM!
The BEUTY starts when you try to make it sweat! 😀
I can hear it in the fans. I launch 4 browsers with tons of tabs, Tons of applications and then launch Battlefield 4 with all that crap in the background. And then the fans move from lowest setting to the second lowest setting. It's not sweating, it just stood up and asked "hello? wassup?" I've never exceeded 100GB of RAM usage! :-o
Perhaps I should work harder at finding it's sweating point!

At work I have a newer computer with DDR4 and a meager 16GB RAM. After a couple of browsers, Icecast server and a Stereo Tool feed for a radio station it starts crapping itself. :/
 
That is not quite true. The Bios on this computer does not see the USB card I use so I cannot use it to access the Bios setup and have to use built in USB ports but It works fine after windows boots.
Use of USB card requires drivers.
PCIE/NVME drives would be detected in BIOS without any drivers.

Oh. Your system might be so old, it doesn't have support for PCIE/NVME drives in BIOS at all.
 
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Use of USB card requires drivers.
PCIE/NVME drives would be detected in BIOS without any drivers.
Yes it does. AND in case of the major producers of server technology they tend to be very protective of their own support industry. In case of my Cisco computer they are extremely picky of what hardware to support at Bios level. In my experience this can be gone around at OS level in most cases. I KNOW that there are better CPUs compatible with this system but the Bios rejects everything that is not in a certain list that can be found in one of their manuals.
 
Is there anybody else that does not attack my spelling errors, falsify identity or transactions, or divert the subject? I'd really appreciate that.
 
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