Aurora R7, installing second SSD for Oculus Rift usage

Using the adapter I understand means losing half my speed. 

This is my best possible solution.  My OS is already installed on a SATA HDD so I don't need to go through the horrible process of reinstalling Windows and all of my apps, that's hours of work for me. If I can remove the 16 GIGS and slide it into that slot that's perfect.  I only bought it to use with Occulus Rift and gaming. I need to figure out how to turn off RAID which I'm sure is an easy process but I have absolutely no clue about bifurcation. 

I understand that doing that I lose half my speed. 

OK, so I am just partitioning the drives.  Easy enough but does that mean that the install will attach itself to my C drive?

You only lose half your speed if you have an R10, and plug the adapter into the third PCiE slot.  For whatever reason, the B550a board that Dell uses for the R10 only powers half the PCiE lanes supplied to that slot. 

The R7, 8 and 9 use the z370 board, that does not cut speed for the second and third PCiE slots.

I have an R7 and can confirm that you do not lose any speed with the adapter.  I have 3 NVMe drives, here are my benchmarks: 

https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-Desktops/Installing-3-x-1TB-M-2-Samsung-PCiE-NVME-Drives-in-Aurora-R7-8/m-p/7474557

Here's a video from Intel on disabling the Optane drive, which you need to do before removing the drive.  It's a short and easy process.  

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000024626/memory-and-storage.html

You'd lose more speed with the SATA drive as a boot drive, and the nvme as the storage. It's actually not to hard to switch the boot drives. 

1. Plug in the new m2 nvme drive into the m2 slot, and keep your 3.5" boot drive plug in as well, load to windows.

2.  Install Macrium Reflect free edition (https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree) and use it to "clone" your boot drive (not image it), to the new nvme SSD.  It will take about 10 minutes and you can listen to music in the meantime. 

3. When finished, turn off the PC and unplug your 3.5" boot drive.  Then restart with just the m2 drive plugged in and verify it boots to windows.   

That being said, if a glitch does occur, you still have your 3.5" boot drive and can go back to how you had it, no problems.  Usually, the preferred approach is to do a clean install to the new drive, so you can lose all the Dell bloatware and start clean (e.g., no Intel RST, which is used for Optane).  But the cloning option is designed for this purpose and works pretty good for a quick fix. 

I purchased this exact set up - the same exact PCIE expansion card from Amazon.

however, the computer does not boot with the card plugged in. No boot at all. Pressing the black button in the back, turns on for 0.5 seconds then turns off. Power button flashes yellow, then red for 0.5 seconds.

I have also tried a replacement, same card. No luck.

the computer works fine without the expansion card plugged in.

is there a bios setting that needs to be adjusted prior? I’ve tried both PCIE cards on a different pc and it works just fine with an nvme SSD plugged in.

You've migrated your system to the SSD correct?

the additional nvme is serving as expansion rapid storage only. It is empty. I have plugged the new nvme into the motherboard, it works fine.

just some issues with the PCIE card. Starting to believe both PCIE expansion cards are faulty. 

When I installed the new 1T SSD I put it in the slot that Dell had installed the built-in, I figured it would recognize that expansion slot for sure since it worked with the previous card they installed.  I didn't do anything with the second card that was already installed because the new one would totally cover the amount of speed and trust me the difference is quite noticeable. I had to of course migrate the OS to the SSD and I went in to change the boot order to the new SSD.  So did you replace the built-in with the new one?  Also, not that I'm doubting you I just would find it strange that both do not work in the one machine, however, it makes me feel strongly that the issue is totally fixable but we just have to play a bit.  It was challenging for me too, trust me.  Once we can get the desktop booting from the new card then I would say let's go from there to install your second card. Can you attach a photo of the SSD you are installing?  There is a previous post that says you have to buy an adapter for a second SSD.

If you read the history on this issue there are a number of steps that have to be followed, unfortunately, there are a few responses where we got off track but everything it took to get things running are there however the solution was just the final step it took to confirm the issue was resolved. You have to disable RAID, it's going away anyway so it's useless to use it in fact it may already have been discontinued.  There is a new system with a couple of simple downloads to use the storage features if you need to.  I prefer to handle my own storage and work with partitioning drives for certain things. In any case, I'm here to help you every step of the way so that you can avoid the problems that I ran into and consumed time.  Getting to the slot is not as bad as it looks, once you do it, the next time you go in you'll totally remember what you did and it's an awesome way to see the inside of your new matching to find it's the same as every other PC with a few things added and in different places.  I wanted to be sure to mention turning of RAID because it is an important step to follow and just partition your storage with a separate drive which will resolve what appears to be the loss of your storage.  That storage is moved into C drive so chop the amount of space you previously had for storage into a new drive so you know what's what.