Precision T5600 PCIe boot success

I have A18 bios too. However, I still can't get it to boot off m.2 nvme SSD. Did you have to do anything special in the bios setup?

Also, are you sure you got WD Green SSD? Because WD Green doesn't have pci-e nvme it only have M.2 SATA.

---

@bitbang wrote:

I have A18 bios too. However, I still can't get it to boot off m.2 nvme SSD. Did you have to do anything special in the bios setup?

---

What SSDs have you tried?

The Dell T5600 supports Legacy Boot, so you should be able to boot from a M.2 NVMe SSD as long as it has a Legacy Option ROM.  Only a handful of M.2 NVMe SSD devices were made with a Legacy Option ROM, though.

You could also try "dual" or "split" device booting - boot to boot manager on a SATA drive, but have Windows installed on M.2 NVMe SSD.

---

@bmcowboy wrote:

[...]

Once T5600 arrived, I installed a dual-NVMe PCIe adapter on it and successfully built a Win10 system with UEFI boot. Here's some of the information and let me know if you need further details:

- [...]

- m.2 PCIe adapter: Orico PRS2

- m.2 drive: WD Green 120GB x 2, run as RAID0

---

The ORICO PRS2 is NOT a NVMe adapter.  It's a SATA adapter that provides dual M.2 SATA SSD RAID.  It doesn't support 'M'-keyed M.2 SSDs - meaning NVMe.  You'll get similar performance to any other format SATA SSDs in a similar RAID setup.

The WD Green's are also SATA SSD devices, just in M.2 format.

I'm using Western Digital Black NVMe SSD M.2 im not sure if they support Legacy Boot Rom as you mentioned. If not, I was wondering if there are any cheap raid controller that support Legacy Boot Rom for NVMe.

The Samsung 950 PRO (was available in 256GB or 512GB) is the go-to M.2 NVMe device with a Legacy Option ROM.  Seems the Plextor 8MPe (which also has a Legacy Option ROM) has been tried here in the Dell Precision T5600, but had compatibility issues - recognized in BIOS, but failed part-way through boot.  Similar to my experience on a Dell X58 chipset non-UEFI system.  Although, I was able to boot and it worked fine once booted, it took 1 1/2 minutes to boot (obviously some boot-time communications handshaking issues).  The performance and 1TB was nice, but I passed on the slow boot.  Samsung 950 PRO 512GB was flawless, with similar performance.  Got mine off ebay.

To use the Legacy Option ROM the SSD needs to be initialized MBR, BIOS set to Legacy Boot and Legacy Option ROM's enabled if there is such a BIOS setting.  I usually set to AHCI so I don't have to mess with injecting Intel RST drivers during Windows install (and besides Samsung NVMe driver needs AHCI, if you want to use it instead of Windows default driver or Intel RST).

I don't know of any M.2 NVMe SSD RAID controllers that are cheap - at least I wouldn't consider the High Point SSD7101A-1 cheap at $400.  (It also isn't clear to me whether or not this requires motherboard PCIe bifurcation support - meaning only works on newer motherboards.)

Further input to share.

- BIOS
My T5600 came with A06 at the very beginning. USB boot, NVMe adapter detection and harddisk cloning were all fine. However, when I updated it to the latest A18, everything gone wrong. It couldn’t boot from USB no matter using legacy BIOS or UEFI. Tested A17, A15 & A14, all leads to the same problem. I then back to the starting point and downgrade it to the original A06, and then everything back to normal again. Strange but as least a way to boot from USB and start harddisk cloning. When all setup done and Win10 can smoothly run on the NVMe drive, I dare not to upgrade BIOS now ^^”

- PCIe slot
After installing a RTX 2070 display card into the default graphic PCIe slot (the blue one), I can only choose between 2 PCIe slots to install the NVMe adapter: the one next to the traditional PCI slot and the one next to RAM slot. Both are “x16 (wired as x4)” but only the one next to RAM slot is PCIe GEN3. So, you know what to choose! Check on page 4 of this PDF to know more about T5600 slot allocation if needed. Also, you can use tools from the original SSD manufacturer (e.g. Western Digital SSD Dashboard for WD SSD) to ensure you NVMe running on the right interface.

- Clover Configuration
Sometimes I found Clover bootloader may not boot correctly (stuck on drive detection, lead to system reboot, etc.). Note that the original concept of Clover is to build a "Hackintosh" system to run Apple OS X on non-Apple hardware. The USB stick generated from the Boot Disk Utility comes with lots of useless stuff in our case. I followed this post to configure Clover, then my system smooth on every boot.

- Choosing NVMe adapter
Apart from high-end adapter, I could only budget to choose cheap cards like costing at US$12 something. You may find lots of combo adapters that comes with 1 B-key slot and 1 M-key slot. I once wondering who would need such an odd combination. But soon I realize that it just serves our needs! T5600 comes with 4 HDD SATA port but only 3 15-pin power cable. And I never wanted to add any power cable splitter. These kinds of combo adapter allow me to connect a m2 SATA SSD without additional power cable. On the other hand, Clover can be installed not only on USB stick but also harddisk. Therefore, I can now run Clover bootloader from the m2 SATA and Windows from NVMe, i.e. no need using USB stick as bootloader. Perfect!

- Speed
WD Black 250GB NVMe speeds up to 3000MB/s. However, I could only get 18XX read / 16XX write during several benchmark tests. I still can’t figure out what’s the button neck. Hopefully anyone here try it out. Here’s my results for your reference.

Thank you and Enjoy!

Further investigation on how BIOS version affect NVMe boot on T5600

As day-off today, I've got spare time to perform varies BIOS version compatibility test with NVMe boot on T5600. Here's the results:

Seems like some changes on A14 made the difference. Checked on driver details and found this:

" Enhancements
- Set Max Read Request Size to 4096 bytes to enhance PCIe performance."

This changes affected normal reading of NVMe on PCIe adapter. In fact, even if you install the NVMe set as spare drive but not the OS drive, you would only locate it in MMC as an unknown drive and cannot format.

For those who want to normally use NVMe drive with PCIe adapter on T5600, check the BIOS version on your system and downgrade it back to A13 if needed.

Hi @Techgee,

Not sure about DUET but do have successful case with GRUB.

I have a Dell Precision T3600 (BIOS A17) and a Dell PowerEdge T320. 
Both models have the "older" UEFI, they can not directly boot a NVME SSD drive on a PCIe x4 slot.

I go to win-raid forum
   [Guide] NVMe-boot for systems with legacy BIOS and older-UEFI (DUET-REFIND) 

I use this feature
  HOW to MAKE THE USB flash drive (non-bootable) for REFIND.
   Booting the NVME drive from older-UEFI capable board - REFIND mass-storage without DUET - with USBSetup: 

Both of my systems already used UEFI boot to dual boot Win10/W2012 or Win10/W2016 off the SSDs connected to SATA3 port (T3600) or SATA2 port (T320).

• I install the SSD NVMe M.2 on the PCIe adapter riser card and install the riser card onto PCIe x4 slot.
• I use SSD migration software to migrate my OSes from SSD (on SATA ports) to SSD NVMe (on PCIe). 
• I create the USB stick (see above, CLEAN, FORMAT, REFIND).
• I power down the system, insert the USB stick into the internal USB port, 
  disconnect SSDs on SATA ports.
• I power up the system, configure BIOS to do UEFI boot off the USB stick. 
• BIOS UEFI boot -> USB (FAT32) \EFI\Boot\Bootx64.efi <-> \EFI\Boot\drivers\NvmExpressDxe.efi 
     -> SSD_NVMe_Windows_BootMgr -> Win10 or W2012/W2016

Hope this help for those who want a little bit more speeds when OSes on 
SSD connected to SATA2 (3Gbps or ~300MBs) or SATA3 (6Gbps or ~500MBs) 
to SSD NMVe on PCIex4 (5Gbps x4 ~2000MBs, 4x increase vs SATA3).

Hi @Sniickers ,

Interesting! Samsung EVO 860 maximum r/w speed at 550/520 mb/s. That means even though you've got 4 units of EVO 860 setup as RAID0 with H310, maximum speed would not exceed 1000 mb/s. Would you like to share how to make it?

There really isnt a need to boot from nvme drive on pci. That's if you have the Perc H310 pci card. I installed a samsung 860 evo ssd attached to my perc pci card under UEFI in my T3600. Crystal disk Mark reflects 3490.7MB Read and 2564.3 MB Write for sequential. Im rather pleased with it.