It doesn’t recognize my drive at all.
Which NVMe M.2 should I buy to be sure it works with the Zimaboard 2?
For that expansion card, from what I can tell, you should be able to fit a SATA NVMe (which is what you have) at the upper slot and a PCIE NVMe to the bottom slot. Just move your SSD to the other slot and it should likely work, I see a SATA data port too so perhaps you’ll need to connect it with your Zimaboard SATA port too, give it a shot and see what works.
I tried it in the top slot, but it’s not detected there either. There’s a SATA port on the side of the board, but if I connect it to the Zimaboard motherboard, I’ll be left without my RAID 1.
I bought this as a kit with an NVMe expansion card, hoping to use it for add-ons. But it seems I rushed and bought the wrong thing, or misunderstood something.
Your drive is actually not an NVMe drive, it’s a SATA M.2 drive.
You can see it directly on the label in your photo:
“M.2 2280 SATA”
That’s the important part here.
The expansion card you bought has two different M.2 slots:
- one slot for SATA/NGFF drives
- one slot for PCIe NVMe drives
Even though the drives look almost identical physically, internally they work very differently.
In your photos, the SSD is installed in the NVMe slot, so the ZimaBoard is expecting a PCIe NVMe device there, but your drive is SATA, which is why it is not detected.
The other thing people often miss is the small SATA connector on the side of the expansion card.
For SATA M.2 drives, that connector usually needs to be linked back to one of the motherboard SATA ports with a SATA cable, because PCIe alone cannot carry SATA data.
So technically your current SSD may still work, but:
- it needs to be in the SATA-labelled slot
- and the side SATA port likely needs to be connected to the motherboard
The downside is that this would consume one of your SATA ports, which you said you already need for RAID1.
Honestly, the cleanest solution is probably to return this SSD and buy a real NVMe drive instead.
For ZimaBoard 2, I would stick with a normal M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD from a known brand, something like:
- Samsung 970 EVO Plus
- WD Blue SN580
- Crucial P3 / P3 Plus
- Kingston NV2
- Lexar NM790
The key thing when buying:
- it must say “NVMe”
- it must say “PCIe”
- and it should be 2280 size
Avoid anything labelled:
- “M.2 SATA”
- “NGFF SATA”
because those are not true NVMe drives even though they physically fit the same style connector.
2 Likes
Thank you very much for the clarification. If I buy the real M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD you suggested, will I be able to connect it without an additional SATA cable? Or will I still lose one connector? [quote=“gelbuilding, post:6, topic:8573”]
Honestly, the smartest solution would probably be to return this SSD and buy a real NVMe drive instead.
[/quote]
I took it out of my GK3Pro mini PC, which was running my HomeAssistant.
Yes, if you buy a real NVMe M.2 2280 drive, it should work directly in the NVMe slot with no extra SATA cable needed and no SATA port lost.
Your current SSD is an M.2 SATA drive from the GK3Pro, which is why the ZimaBoard cannot see it in the NVMe slot.
A proper NVMe drive is definitely the cleaner solution here.
1 Like
Yesterday I rolled back from 1.61 to 1.54, and my SSD was detected in the top slot with the SAT cable connected. It wasn’t there before with firmware 1.61.
Interesting, that actually points more toward a possible 1.6.x compatibility or detection issue rather than the SSD itself.
Since the drive was detected again on 1.5.4 with the SATA cable connected, the hardware path is clearly capable of working.
So at this point I would not fully blame the SSD anymore. It may simply be that 1.6.1 changed something with storage detection or the expansion card handling.
I spent two days reading forums, and many people were complaining about 1.6.1. They rolled back to 1.5.4, and everything became stable. So I decided to uninstall everything and install 1.5.4, and voila, the disk was found. Although I didn’t encounter any problems with 1.6.1, except for one: I couldn’t add the Quemo agent to the virtual machine in HomeAssistant or connect the SONOFF ZBDongle-E USB drive.
That honestly makes sense. There have been quite a few reports lately around 1.6.x involving storage detection, USB behavior, mounts, and passthrough issues.
The fact that your SSD immediately appeared again after going back to 1.5.4 is a pretty strong indicator that the issue is software/firmware related rather than faulty hardware.
The Quemu agent and USB passthrough issue with the SONOFF dongle also sounds consistent with some of the changes introduced in 1.6.x.
1 Like