Build Advice 5 Years on, looking for a general upgrade once again.

I suggested a 2 port as fast hard drives, high rpm big capacity drive like I have for example can transfer ar 250MB/s which is half the bandwidth of the slot but it all depends on what drives you have and if you don't care about out right speed, you could put a 8 port card in, you just need to know that if you use all the drives concurrently you will be bandwidth constrained (it is unlikely an 8xSATA card will be on PCIe x1, most likely x2 or x4)

so this would do for 2 ports.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Syba-SY-PE...xpress+x1&qid=1621587026&s=electronics&sr=1-3

as would the 4 port PCIe x1 card on the same page

 

Hey guys
All the parts came today and I am trying to put it all together now but there is a small problem - I can't fit the Pcie card below the GPU. it starts rubbing in the fan and I could barely force it in.

Opsy daizy, any suggestions how I could still use all my hdds? I am about to install the nvme drive now, but I will temporary disconnect two of my old hdds.

IMG_20210525_215032 by Razgrad posted 25 May 2021 at 21:56

IMG_20210525_214842 by Razgrad posted 25 May 2021 at 21:56

 

I guess your GPU must be sagging, perhaps you can unscrew it, push it up and screw it in tight, or get a pciex1 riser cable as you have plenty of slots in your case, you could screw the sata card on one of the lower sata off of the extension cable.

Not used them myself but no reason why they wouldn't work. First one that popped up in a search, designed for just this scenario.

Yantan PCIE X1 Riser Cable Dual 90 Degree Right Angled: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

 

I don't think that would work, because I have that HD Audio cable connected below the PCIE slot. I guess if I don't use the front audio input/outputs of my case I could disconnect them, but is there another option to keep it internally?

 

The cable is 20cm which is enough to go over

 

Ok, I will buy that cable and I'll try to route it away from the audio cable, however after 4 hours of tinkering about I was not able to get my Windows running with the nvme installed. I tried many things, but without success. Just as the log-in menu shows up, a few seconds later I get blue screen that says PC will be automatically restarted and just goes on and on. I tried safe mode and I crashed again. I changed the boot settings to use my old ssd with my OS on it as a primary drive but still no success.
As soon as I removed the nvme drive, on the next restart it all worked flawlessly, just as before with no signs of crashes or weird behaviour. I have also disconnected both SATA cables from SATA5 5 and 6 slots to make sure that the full bandwidth is available for the nvme.
I was able to get into windows with the M2 drive installed ONLY in safe mode with networking. I set the drive to be assigned and gave it a letter. On the next restart into normal windows mode, it was still crashing.

Any idea what could the problem be? I don't really want to reinstall right now.

Should I return this drive and ask for replacement? I don't thing the drive is the problem, but who knows...

 

Ok, Long story short - It was software problem, no matter what i tried ( and i tried hard for 3 days with sleepless nights) I was not able to get both storage drives Running at the same time, while I was using the Operating system from the Older SSD drive. My original idea was to simply create a backup image of my existing OS, Connect the NVME and using a recovery USB to restore the Image onto the new drive, then format and re-purpose the old SSD.

-So I had to disconnect the NVME (otherwise Windows crashes on log-in screen),
-Create installation usb from my old drive
-Disconnect the old drive, Connect the NVME
-Install Windows on NVME
-Connect old SSD, but de-activate the partitions (or else it crashes)
-Run OS from NVME, copy any valuable information from Old SSD (Luckily all my browser stuff (bookmars, settings, passwords etc) were backed up, and I use Google Drive for most of the files, so there was not much to be manually backed up)
-Format the SSD Wipe Clean
-And re-do all the system settings I am used to (such as non collapsable tabs, no cortana etc...).
-etc....the normal past Re-Install jobs a man has to do to get it all going again. Install all the games took a while too.

It turned out that the problem was something to do with the file system on the different drives. I had originally used Windows 7 on my oldschool HDD, then a few years later I switched to an SSD but I kept my original OS with the Image option. Then at some point I upgraded windows via the automatic update feature (from Win7 to Win 10), and I was able to keep my files and settings. Although both drives were NTFS, there was something else in conflict, something to do with the way the partitions were formated, so UEFI settings etc.. I am not enve sure what settings I tried to change at this point. MBR is apparently a thing from the past now, but my SSD was using it so No clue.

It is all working now, I even managed to install that riser cable that @sandys suggested, it is slightly twisted around the Audio connector but it works, so happy days.

Thanks all for your help.

 

Good to hear its running in the end, sounds like you had some fun in the process, annoying when the supposedly simple things turn into a major task.

Good to hear the riser is working out for you too.