Consider adding another drive without needing to replace PCI lanes or rebuild the system.
Consider adding another drive without needing to replace PCI lanes or rebuild the system.
Current storage setup includes 2 M.2 SSDs and four 1 TB SATA SSDs. CPU runs Intel 9900K, motherboard is Asus z390p PCI-based. Devices list features Nvidia 2080Ti and eight 1 M.2 cards (non-functional in BIOS). Additional drives are needed but they’re not accessible via PCI lanes—this could require a full rebuild or a new build. Windows installation is being considered to mitigate performance issues with heavier games on Linux. Recently purchased a TV for couch gaming; remote play is problematic on Linux, especially when paired with Proton. If possible, I’d like to run Windows on a dedicated drive. Unfortunately, my Linux OS is already configured across two pools spanning all drives (boot pool and data pool), set up in RAID 0 or similar, which complicates reinstalling. I don’t need much space since I have a HA GlusterFS cluster ready for game storage—approximately 80MB/s should suffice. Avoiding booting from USB is also important. My goal is simply to boot and have sufficient storage for smooth Windows operation. I’ve tried using a VM for Windows but found it difficult; the only viable workaround is disabling the VM on the host OS and assigning it to the guest, which isn’t ideal.
Is it a SATA drive? The board only has four, but it seems to support at least six... Could you tell me what adapter you have? You might be able to connect something that works.
The RAID setup is likely causing the problem here. A better approach would be to combine the four drives into one larger drive by using a temporary USB external case with an 8-10TB drive, moving all four to it, then removing three and relying on the remaining one for booting or storage. Without that workaround, a complete reinstall seems necessary. This has changed my perspective on RAID usage definitely. Edited June 20, 2022 by An0maly_76 Revised, more info
I don’t have an 8-10TB SSD, but I could easily reduce it to just three of four SATA SSDs. I didn’t want to do that because it would require a full day, and I’d need to keep everything on my GlusterFS cluster since I don’t have enough space locally.
Are you sure you need every lane connected to the GPU? It might work in x8 mode. I use four GPUs on my 9900k and the setup looks different—slot 1 has x16, slot 2 switches to x4.
You're attempting to use an X8 M.2 drive in a slot that supports either X1 or X4 speeds.
I mean I threw it in there just because i had the components on hand not because i expected it to work. I'm open to other solutions as well I'm attempting to install Windows on a USB 3.0 Drive but if there's something more reliable that's definitely preferable, even an HDD would be acceptable if i could somehow squeeze in an additional SATA port