Looking for guidance on connecting drives via U.2 ports on your server motherboard
Looking for guidance on connecting drives via U.2 ports on your server motherboard
He gave me his server build, but I'm struggling to connect the M.2 drives via U.2. I'm completely new to server boards. I turned on the U.2 ports in BIOS, yet the drives still don't appear. It doesn't show up through BIOS or the operating system. The board is a WS C621E Sage. Please help—I've tried everything possible.
These SSDs are commonly imitated Samsung products and use SATA interfaces, which won't function properly over U.2 connections. If they even work at all, you likely purchased them as NVMe Samsung 980 Pros and were misled. The adapters resemble standard SATA connectors, so double-check they don’t fit into the board's SATA ports.
These aren't NVMe SSDs or U.2 adapters. They convert standard SATA M.2 SSDs into typical SATA/SAS connectors. (Note, M.2 refers to the physical size, not a protocol. Both SATA and PCIe/NVMe SSDs use M.2.) They need to be plugged into the regular SATA ports on your motherboard.
Edited August 9, 2024 by Needfuldoer
Using what you have now means nothing. You’d need to invest in NVME SSDs and NVME M.2 to U.2 adapters, or buy dedicated U.2 SSDs. Both options become costly quickly; adapters start at around $20 per drive, and U.2 SSDs are subject to data center fees since they’re not a consumer product. U.2 is simply another packaging type for NVMe SSDs, designed to look like standard SAS drives so they fit into existing server setups with hot-swap bays.
I discovered something new, thanks. I’ll keep it simple with SATA then. It’s really disappointing. I should mention this is my dad’s setup, not mine. He has a lot of random gear scattered around. Still, I think it’ll work. Thanks!
If the drives act like SATA SSDs, the adapter should work if connected to the correct ports on the motherboard. The physical connector differs, which might explain why you were using U.2 ports instead of SATA ones.
I decided to skip the drives, I didn’t realize they were fake until now. And your point about it being okay. Ran Crystaldisk and yeah… they’re pretty poor. I’m not using them. Likely they’ll be replaced with some high-capacity HDDs. I really want to use it as a media server and these speeds won’t work. I just need to figure out where Dad got these XD. Wow, their performance is terrible.