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Precision T5500 - PCIe SATA not working in BIOS
I have a Precision T5500 and I have tried to add a PCIe SATA controller in the PCIe 8x slot. I have tried this with two AS Media 1060 based controllers.
They get recognized and I can see the drives attached to them, only once I am booted in Windows 10.
But in BIOS, they can't see any of the attached drives, so I can't boot from them.
Has anyone here a working PCIe SATA controller in a T5500, and what type it is?
SoNic 67
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December 8th, 2018 17:00
Nobody has any insight into this?
Techgee
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December 9th, 2018 10:00
I see no option in the Dell Precision T5500 BIOS to enable booting from add-in PCIe cards with bootable Legacy Option ROMs (like a ASMedia 106X SATA controller card).
Personally, what I would do if I wanted to get better performance than the T5500's native SATA II by running Windows from either an add-in SATA III card or a M.2 NVMe SSD would be to forget booting from the add-in card. Why? Because you probably can't with the T5500 and, anyway, there's probably no need to if you want to run Windows on a SATA III or M.2 NVMe SSD.
Basically, boot off a boot manager on native SATA II and have it redirect to Windows OS installed on SATA III (or a NVMe) SSD.
To do this, I'd try "dual booting" from one of the drives connected to the native SATA II (preferably a SSD). So, "dummy" or backup Windows installed with its boot manager on SATA II (I'd let Windows create two partitions - one for boot, one for OS). Install second Windows on SATA III or M.2 NVMe SSD - when doing so leave SATA II drive in (so hopefully Windows install will add a boot entry to the already existing boot manager on the SATA II drive). You may need to add a driver for the SATA III or NVMe controller to the boot manager, but that should be doable. If it doesn't add a boot entry to the boot manager for the second Windows, then run the Windows on SATA II and explicitly add a boot entry to its boot manager. If all this works you might be able to free up the Windows install partition on SATA II (except for the boot manager partition, of course).
Anyway, may or may not be worth trying...
Techgee
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December 9th, 2018 13:00
Oh, what specific ASMedia ASM106X SATA Controller card model # are you using?
Some of these have 4 ports (like 2 internal and 2 external (eSATA)), but only 2 ports work at a time. Selecting which 2 ports work is often done with jumpers on the PCB of the card. Some models default to the 2 internal SATA ports being enabled by default, others to the 2 external eSATA ports being enabled by default. Often, these cards come with no instructions or indication that the jumpers need to be configured as desired...