Asrock rack C236 M WS NVME drive recommendations

[nrmerritt]

Hello.
I have decided to upgrade my boot device to an NVME drive. I purchased a Western Digital Black SN750 SE 250GB and cannot get this board to detect it. I tried CSM mode in all configs and even disabled it but still nothing. I know the SSD is good since it works just fine in a USB to NVME adapter. I know the board supports up to Gen 3 NVME and the SN750 is Gen 4 but is supposed to be Gen 3 compatible. I will have to return it to microcenter but hope someone here has a recommendation for a new NVME drive.

 

[Ericloewe]

Your problem is, with 99% certainty, the system firmware, if the SSD works fine.

1. Disable everything CSM, legacy boot, whatever.
2. Reboot and enter the setup menu again.
3. Configure your boot settings to boot your install media.
4. Install TrueNAS.
5. Reboot into the setup menu and configure the boot priority with hard disk first.
6. Configure the hard disk priority list if needed.

 

[nrmerritt]

Your problem is, with 99% certainty, the system firmware, if the SSD works fine.

1. Disable everything CSM, legacy boot, whatever.
2. Reboot and enter the setup menu again.
3. Configure your boot settings to boot your install media.
4. Install TrueNAS.
5. Reboot into the setup menu and configure the boot priority with hard disk first.
6. Configure the hard disk priority list if nee

Update.
I tried turning off everything related to CSM and it still would not detect it. I will be trying a 250 GB Samsung EVO 970+ (Gen 3) later this evening and report back how that goes.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[Ericloewe]

Gotta love AMI firmware. Every day a new, terribly irritating bug.

 

[mav@]

This board is a bit old, so I would not be too surprised if it does not support NVMe booting. For example Supermicro X10 boards I have support UEFI, but still not NVMe. Board manual mentions some NVMe settings in BIOS, so at least make sure you are running the latest BIOS version.

 

[nrmerritt]

So it turns out the Samsung worked just fine. I installed it, booted the system with no changes to settings other than selecting the new SSD as the first boot device. I rebooted and temporarily selected a USB drive to boot from and proceeded with a normal installation. I don't know what exactly was the cause of the board not detecting the WD SSD but I highly recommend if you attempt using the NVME port on this motherboard to purchase a Samsung unit. I specifically bought the 970 EVO Plus 250GB, this is the manufacturer number just for reference. MZ-V7S250B/AM

 

[Ericloewe]

Well, I’ll be damned. I know that early Samsung NVMe SSDs included an option ROM with an NVMe driver, but I think they dropped it by the time the 970 generation rolled around. Which would leave me at a loss as to why the other disk didn’t work.

 

[nrmerritt]

I really appreciate everyone's thoughts on this issue. I'm just glad I didn't have a bad motherboard. It's likely just finicky with it's NVME support and I think ASRock Rack is done with supporting any newer NVME drives, they don't even post a compatible list for anything other than spinning drives.