M.2 expansion card on rampage 4 extreme? Possible other options?

Get a single 500GB SSD and be done. It will be much less hassle than RAID 0. I don't recommend SSD RAID, especially for a boot device.

what kanewolf said X2

i have been screwing with my xp941 for about a week now, have spent so much time researching getting it to load windows and run as OS drive that my eyes are bleeding

iirc, run thru a PCIe adaptor card, it cannot be used as a boot drive, but i could be wrong

i've seen reports of folks reporting positive results loading windows and running their xp941 as boot drive in the Rampage IV Extreme board. About the only board i have not been able to find a similiar report is on my Asus Z97M-Plus board. On some of their boards Asus has updated their user manuals to include bios setting for using the M.2 socket

the issue for me, and what i suspect kanewolf was referring to, is my board has to be set to RAID to load windows, but when i do it, it fails to completely load but in the interim it has corrupted my OS drive so it won't load on next boot.

Apparently the PCIe interfacing requires the drive to be partitioned in GPT and EFI which requires the RAID setting (i may have that convoluted as i'm not computer literate) but after a week of 20+ hours of researching and attempting different recommended BIOS settings, i'm wishing i'd spent my coin on a sammy 850 EVO

it's simply not worth the time i've wasted much less the money

hope that helps

I officially threw in the towel tonite - i had it installed in the M.C socket, which btw means you loose use of sata ports 5 & 6 - Asus sez it "shares bandwidth with sata 5 & 6" and technically it does, what they don't say in either their advertising or manual is that you have 3 choices in sata settings - one is "sata" which means only sata ports, 2nd is "auto" which if a M.2 SSD is installed in the M.2 socket, no sata ports 5 & 6, and 3rd choice is "M.2" which means only M.2, basically the same as 2nd choice ie "auto"

a moderator in the asus forums was helping me and after a dozen attempts, i still couldn't get windows 7 to install - here's the highest i've gotten in the install procedure



a lot of XP941 / Asus owners post that they've hit the same roadblock, sometimes earlier ie not being able to load the latest Intel F6 Raid driver (linked below)

one of the issues i was experiencing, the bios settings sometimes change spontaneously - first, some posters indicate they were successful setting PCH Storage Config to "RAID" and dis-abling "CSM Launch' in Boot settings, which is what Asus offers or suggests ( as their only suggestion). But no matter what i did, when i'd get to the above screen, i'd reboot into BIOS and find CSM Launch had spontaneously gone back to "enabled" (yes i had hit "save changes" when exiting BIOS. Other posters said to no longer use those settings, that they'd been successful using AHCI and "CSM Launch" enabled.

I've got well over 20 hours screwing with this, and considering that using the M.2 socket kills off sata ports 5 & 6, if i can't use the M.2 SSD as a boot drive, it's too expensive both in terms of $$ cost and sata port cost to use as a storage drive

go thru the SSD review forum linked below - not but seven pages but in there the OP actually states the web is "littered" with ASUS users who can't get their M.2 working as boot drive. There doesn't seem to be a consistent route. One easy route is to copy an existing SSD if it was formatted as GPT when you cloned it - but windows 7 won't install from a disk or from a USB drive to either of my samsung EVO SSDs when they are partitioned GPT.

One of my problems is i'm running Windows 7 and apparently windows 8 has an easier time installing but there are at least a dozen or so approaches, bios setting wise, that are contradictory, but posters are indicating success in loading windows (mostly windows 8) - ie some say set to "RAID" and dis-able "CSM launch", others stating the exact opposite.

The problem seems to stem from the fact that as the samsung xp941 is currenlty only sold as an "OEM" unit, it does not have the OPROM pre-installed, while the plextor and others being offered as "retail" units, do have it installed.

Asus tech support yesterday flat out told me they don't support the xp941 as it does not have an OPROM pre-installed.

it looks like i confused the ASUS X99 Rampage V Extreme with your board

here are the best two threads i found re running xp941 as boot drive

http://www.thessdreview.com/Forums/samsung/3990-xp941-asus-z97-pro-installed-os-bootable.html?s=a73a0f82fd2639d3952885a52477aa77
https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/how-to-install-windows-8.1-on-the-samsung-xp941-ss/138296

and one that might also be helpful - How to install Windows 8.1 on XP941 M.2 SSD
https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/how-to-install-windows-8.1-on-the-samsung-xp941-ss/138296


and ramcity's M.2 / motherboard compatibility list
https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/m.2-ngff-ssd-compatibility-list/189

if it helps, i assembled a word doc with the primary installation procedure i followed, then quotes from some other posters' installation procedures that they'd followed

REMEMBER TO DIS-CONNECT ALL HARD DRIVES (SSDs as well) IN THE COMPUTER before
restarting the computer when running "AHCI" for PCH Storage setting – two reasons: one it corrupted my orig OS drive 2nd, per windows forum, it must install to the “C” drive, and it can’t create one if there’s already a “C” drive in the computer
Used ImgBurn (freeware) to create ISO image of windows DVD, then “burnt” it to the USB drive using Rufus – make sure to select “GPT partition scheme for UEFI computer” and check that FAT32 is selected – must be FAT32. The GPT partition scheme selection is the only one where the uefi boot manager file was created on the USB drive
( Below taken from http://tipsandtricksforum.com/thread-245.html )


Once the bootable USB drive is created using Rufus, check the below:
Preparing the USB Stick for UEFI
Check if the file 'BOOTX64.EFI' via the path \EFI\BOOT\ is available on the stick.
If this is not the case, you can copy the file to the stick by using one of the two methods below:
• If access to the stick is via a UEFI-enabled computer with a Windows 7 (or higher) x64, the Bootloader can be copied and renamed to the stick. You can do this on the system partition under:
•
o C:\Windows\Boot\EFI for the file bootmgfw.efi
o Copy it to the stick in the \EFI\BOOT\ folder and rename this file BOOTX64.EFI (notice the reverse order of efi and boot)

• The file bootmgfw.efi can also be extracted from a Windows 7 (or higher) x64 - DVD. It is located in the 2.7 GByte large archive Install.wim in the subdirectory \sources. The archive can be extracted with an archiving program. This file is located in the subdirectory "1" of the archive at 1\Windows\Boot\EFI\.

NOTE: When installing Windows from a USB Boot drive, you often have two options when selecting the boot device like this for example:
USB Disk 2.0 (3821MB)
UEFI: USB Disk 2.0 (3821MB)
You should definitely select the 2nd option beginning with UEFI when installing windows to the XP941.

Also load the latest intel RAID driver https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24779/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver , on the usb drive (again formatted FAT32) and when loading
Windows be sure, before starting windows installation, to select load driver and point the setup to the USB device where the intel F6 driver above is located

On an asus maximus VII mobo
Anyway, after following the info in this thread, messing with loads of settings and generally scratching my head for hours, I decided to search through the .pdf manual for "M.2". Low an behold, the info I needed was right there on page 3!

Advanced > Onboard Devices > Configuration > PCI Express X4_3 (Black) Bandwidth: [M.2 Mode]
In all other modes, the M.2 slot is disabled.

The drive is now visible in the BIOS, and I can get on with installing the OS

I also set the following options back to their defaults

Boot > CSM (Compatibility Support Module) > Launch CSM > [Enabled]
Advanced > PCH Storage Configuration > SATA > [AHCI]

Hope this helps somebody else out there


Another poster running Z97 DELUXE said
Thank you very much for your contribute but i'm happy to tell that now, with the new bios all procedure is a little bit simplified and i can say without doubts Samsung M.2 ssd XP941 is totally compatible with asus motherboard and all chipsets from z97 to X99. Now the facts:


1) First of all update your bios to the last version, i have an Asus Z97 deluxe and my bios version is 2012
2)in your bios go in Advanced mode and set Sata Express in M.2 mode, Sata mode selection: AHCI (not in RAID!)
3)in boot options go to usb support and set: full initializzation, in CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) set enable (not disable like old bios version!!) and in the suboptions set "boot device control": UEFI and Legacy OPROM, "Boot from storage device": Both, UEFI First, "Boot from PCI-E/PCI expansion : UEFI driver first

now the most important thing: YOU MUST HAVE THE CORRECT IMAGE WITH UEFI SUPPORT OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM! Lot of people said its impossible to install, impossible to see the drive, impossile to boot just because they didn't prepare a correct usb drive for the installation: you need to have an image of you os not more bigger than 4,5 gb, prepare it with RUFUS, an utility that create a perfectly compatible MBR GPT UEFI partitioning, don't use modded os images or bigger than 4,5 gb, format pendrive in fat 32! (this is the reason because your os image should be not more than 4,5 gb)

After all you can install, see you M.2 xp941, boot it, add new hard drives, cd-rom, graphic cards etc....
in my specific situation i have this configuration:

another member on this forum, AFretired (iirc) has linked to an evaluation toms hardware did comparing the benchmarks between running one larger SSD vs two SSDs (equalling the same capacity) in RAID 0 and there wasn't appreciable benefits to the RAID setup - plus RAID introduces some liabilities. In that long post above, i mentioned how the MSR partition on my orig SSD kept getting corrupted, beyond being repairable by the windows disk - that only happened when BIOS was set to RAID in PCH Storage Configuration.

Personally, i'd go with the single SSD - if you research it, you'll find that with SSDs, the larger the drive, up to 500 GB, the faster it's response/read/write time is.

fwiw

as an update to the "installing a xp941 M.2 SSD" saga, i finally got it installed and it is snappy - boot times were 10-12 seconds loading win 7 from cold boot vs 22-25 seconds with a sammy 840 Evo 256 GB.

Programs open in a blink, well most - adobe photoshop takes 3-5 seconds top open vs 7-8 on a sata SSD.

Then i went to partition the drive the same as my sata drives, ie a "C" and a "D" drive, as it also serves when i'm cloning - not cloning the data partition saves time. The instant i hit the "apply" button in EaseUS Partition manager, got a BSOD and now the drive will not boot and will not "repair".

wish i'd done that before i'd spent 8-9 hours reloading all the programs

i'm just a glutton for punishment- just ordered one of the addonics M.2 to PCIe expansion adaptor cards - once i get it worked out at least i'll have all PCIe lanes.

I need to research about RAID (i'm somewhat illiterate on it) and figure out what needed adjustment - the xp941 had zero effect on the data / storage drives (i've got a 4 TB WD HDD for video files) - it was only when i'd connect a SSD that was a clone of the OS drive. But the odd part, even after pulling the xp941 out while the addonics card arrives,
my OS drive is still showing 72 GB free (of 122 GB on that partition), where before it'd gone down to 43 GB free, so "apparently" 29 GB have disappeared except i can't find any files missing, no programs not functioning - not sure what's going on but hopefully it was just the system "mis-measuring" or falsely reporting the amount of free GB before.