Question PCIe M.2 SSD Card help

[KLund1]

I found this SSD in a PCIe adapter card.
It is difficult to post picture in here so here is a link that I think will work for anyone. If not please post that.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/oZhR48PuGALBKSKn9
I have tried this card in a ASrock Z870e and a supermicro C7X99-OCE-F motherboards with Win 11 and Linux Mint 22. The OS's and the MB BIOS's can't see this drive.
I tried the drive by its self in a USB m.2 adapter I use to clean 'regular' M.2 SSD's, and Win 11 can;t see it.
Can some of you smarter then me people out these shed some light about hot to use this? Thanks

 

[evermorex76]

Can you take a picture with better focus on the text of the label and the metal controller heatplate?

Given all the jumpers and other components, I'm kind of thinking that's a very specific SSD that might actually require a card like that. The manual for a similar card from Serial Cables shows the jumpers control things like the voltage to apply to the SSD, SMBus access, and a bunch of other stuff that I don't understand.

 

[evermorex76]

I was able to make out the controller model, which led to this article about a Microsoft datacenter drive using it. And this is the only mention of it (except other sites reporting on the same Twitter post).

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...uncovered-points-to-wider-portfolio-of-drives

Not a very up to date controller if it was only NVMe 1.2 in 2024 when it was "discovered", but that sample was from 2020. Sounds like it got abandoned and somebody just ran across one of the drives. Did you try using it in that PCIe adapter to start with, to see if it's even functional?

 

[KLund1]

Thanks,
Yes, I have a box of these and similar drives. With them all the blue LED on the card lights up, but nothing from the activity light. The dives get quite warm to the touch. Both in the card and in my cheap USB m.2 adapter. I have tried a random sampling of drives from the box, say about 10, and all behave in the same way. I find it hard to believe that they are all bad. But I did find them at a e-recycler.
This particular card came out of the Supermicro motherboard noted above. It was in a Silverstone home entertainment media center case, but the Sata drives had been pulled by the e-recycler, as well as any other cards.
Any suggestions about how to get these recognized by an OS? I think it might be a driver issues now. I remember doing RAID in the XP days and you had to load a RAID driver before XP would see the drive and start the install. Perhaps something similar here?

 

[evermorex76]

You would only need RAID drivers if you have your motherboard's M.2 slot configured for RAID mode, and that wouldn't apply to the USB enclosure or an add-in card. Nothing to me indicates these would be anything other than a regular M.2 NVMe interface, no "built-in RAID" or anything like that, so I don't know why they won't work other than there being some customization in the firmware for their specific use cases. I was going to say if they got used in a datacenter they really could have all been worn out, but a media center shouldn't have done that. OS recognition of course is irrelevant if you can't even get a BIOS to recognize it. Did you try the drive itself directly in a motherboard M.2 slot? (I was unclear that you were trying the SSD in the card on those motherboards.) It COULD just be the card itself that is the problem, but as you say, that many being bad isn't likely, but maybe there is a compatibility issue, although the USB enclosure should have worked then. And we don't really know what all the jumpers on the card do unless you can understand the manual so it may be configured in such a way that it makes it incompatible but can be adjusted.

When you used the enclosure, did Device Manager show anything? Usually it will just show the enclosure's model. Then Disk Management would show the drive for partitioning/initialization. You say Windows doesn't see it where you would usually clean a drive, so I assume you mean diskpart.