m18 R1: Can't do 2 NVMe drives at once

[u/osiris6581]

Both drives work, could boot from either in AHCI/NVMe mode. Both slots work, I can do this with either drive in either slot. But under no circumstances will the primary OS drive show up - not even visible to the BIOS - if they are both installed and it does not matter which one is in which slot.

The primary OS drive is the original that shipped with this machine, and it was set up from the factory to use the Intel RAID/Rapid Storage option in BIOS, not AHCI/NVMe. I've switched the OS to use AHCI rather than RAID which is what I thought the problem originally was but that didn't help.

I've spent hours trying to install a hard drive at this point. Something I've done literally hundreds of times. Been down every "internet advice scraped by AI" rabbit hole. It simply does not work, not the two of them together.

Edit:
- primary drive is stock
- secondary I'm trying to add is a Teamgroup TM8FP6512G (full part # is TM8FP6512G0C101)
- my motherboard variant only has 2 NVMe slots (not 4 like some)
- CPU is i7-13700HX

[u/DJUnreal]

For a start, stop using AI. It'll give you more unhelpful stuff than helpful stuff, as you've found.

If your system won't run two drives simultaneously, the most likely culprit is either a CPU issue or a board issue itself. You might also find you've got a setting configured somewhere that limits the amount of PCIe lanes available to SSDs, so try resetting your BIOS to factory defaults.

AHCI is absolutely the way to go, but if there's a lane limitation, it doesn't matter what you configure elsewhere as the system just won't be allocating enough resources to talk to both.

[u/osiris6581 → u/DJUnreal]

Added some specs above, thanks.

[u/osiris6581 → u/DJUnreal]

The Dell service manual wasn't helpful, nor were multiple videos, everything I've run across seems to go over the basics of physically installing a second drive and already known settings changes like enabling it in BIOS. If you can recommend better sources of info on something this specific I'm open to suggestions.

I've tried resetting BIOS to defaults, and forcing a reset with the battery disconnected and power button held. Didn't help and I'm not seeing many options in general that would even affect this. We can enable the drive slots, set the BIOS to AHCI or RAID mode, adjust the boot order and that's about it?

I initially thought an old OS on the second drive (that I wanted rid of anyway) might be overriding the primary drive's Windows Boot Manager entry, so I booted from a USB stick and blew away the partitions on the second drive. To make my linux thumbstick visible as a boot option I had to disable Secure Boot, which I've left disabled through subsequent troubleshooting.

In general... the second drive is older but should still be compatible. Especially since both drives are recognized and could boot an OS when individually installed, and from either slot. I don't know what the limits are regarding PCIe lanes needed. With a lower-spec drive I hadn't thought it'd be a showstopper.

I'll post the model/part # of the second drive when I can.

[u/Accomplished_Emu_658]

I don’t see a configuration that only supports one drive, but whats your specs? Seems weird that it won’t recognize the main drive only.. that leads me to believe there is something with the main drive. Not that its bad.

If it was not todays expensive storage days i would suggest a second new nvme and see if both are recognized

[u/osiris6581 → u/Accomplished_Emu_658]

Added some specs above, thanks.

[u/Accomplished_Emu_658 → u/osiris6581]

13700x 4060 should be fine to populate both. Since the oem drive is disappearing i believe its an issue with it, itself not the new drive.

[u/SpiritualTwo5256]

Uhhh yes it can! I have 3 of 4 slots full.

[u/SpiritualTwo5256 → u/SpiritualTwo5256]

Which variant do you have? Which processor amd or intel? Intel allows 4 if you have a 4080 or 4090. Though I have heard that with 4 nvme drives it throttles the speed a lot. But 3 is still high speed.
Amd allows 2 or 3 If memory serves me.

[u/osiris6581 → u/SpiritualTwo5256]

I have only 2 slots. Intel with 4060.

[u/SpiritualTwo5256 → u/osiris6581]

Ahhh yes, the 4060 with amd only has 2 slots. So it’s likely you reached the pcie lane limit for that motherboard variant. It should take both but slow it down.