Inspiron 3668, PCIe SSD

As long as you're adding a storage drive - not a boot drive - a PCIe slot SSD will work.  Unless the system has an M.2 slot on the mainboard (doubtful), you won't be able to use the SSD as a boot device, though.

Darn. I was afraid of that. How about an adapter (PCIe plug with an M.2 slot)? Would that possibly work as a boot drive?

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@lancorp wrote:

I'm trying this exact thing now.  I have two different brands of M.2 PCIe/SATA SSD to PCIe 3.0 x4 adapters.  

Using SATA M.2 SSD's and a SATA cable from the card to the SATA-3 connector on the system board, NONE of the boards show the SSD in the BIOS.  It's just like nothing is plugged in.

There must be something Dell has done to the PCIe x16 slot on the system board (the slot you'd put a graphics card in), and it must be somehow handicapped to not see these cards.  I've not had any issues with either of these adapter cards in other Dell desktop PC's or servers.

I don't have a NVMe M.2 SSD to try, just SATA M.2 and it does not work.

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Not really sure what you are doing. I've never heard of such a card or wiring config (in bold)

Now-days, most laptops have moved-on from M.2-SATA. They now use use M.2-PCIe/NVMe SSDs. There is nothing "SATA" about them.

This same tech is also now in recent-model desktops (for the past couple of years). Whether, the M.2 slot is on the motherboard itself, or on a PCIe Addin card that you install ... the SSD that you install into that slot is most likely ...
Form-Factor: M.2-2280
Interface: PCIe
Protocol: NVMe

While a SSD in an "on motherboard" slot should show in BIOS ... I would not expect a SSD on a PCIe Addin-card to (however, that doesn't necessary mean it's not going to work in Windows).

Did either of you ever get this to work? 

I'm going thru the same exercise on an Inspiron 3668.  The Bios does not see the PCIe NVMe drive as a boot option.  Updated to the latest 1.18.0... did not help.  

If I plug in the old SATA drive, Widows boots OK from there and Windows sees the PCIe NVMe drive just fine.  The NVMe is defined as physical drive 0 and the SATA as physical drive 1 with Windows booted from a partition on the physical drive 1 (SATA).  

So it seems its just a bios/UEFI issue looking for the drive at boot time.

You would think they would have taken care of that in the latest bios update.  I have tried this setup on other 7th gen PCs (without M.2 NVME slots)  and they boot up just fine.  

I saw on another forum that some Lenovo PCs have their bios set up to only recognize Samsung NVMe drives... Could that be the issue here? 

Just encountered the same issue here.  Tried a GLOTRENDS PA09-HS M.2 NVMe Pcie adaptor with WD_BLUE SN570 250GB M.2 2280 PCIe.  Can see as a storage device no problem. But not as a boot device! Shame as would have given a nice speed boost to this PC for my customer who wanted a performance increase. 

@chagoi - Is Windows installed on the NVME SSD in the x4 PCIe>NVME adapter? 

Even if Windows has been installed on that SSD, did you disconnect the SATA HDD from the motherboard before attempting to boot from the new SSD in the x4 adapter? 

Windows Boot Manager should be first in the boot sequence in BIOS setup. If both drives have Windows on them, Windows Boot Manager will typically boot from the HDD, not the SSD.

Why not just save an image of the existing SATA HDD an external media, swap in a compatible 2.5" SATA SSD and copy the image onto it?  A SATA SSD is going to be faster than a SATA HDD. 

Just remember that if the SATA SSD had more storage capacity than the SATA HDD, you'll have to expand the size of the C: partition when you copy it onto the new SSD. The imaging software should be able to do that, so be sure you know how before you start. Otherwise, all the extra space will be wasted.