I’m waiting on a standoff kit to come in the mail, as this is my next troubleshooting step

I bought this SSD to fit into a thin client. I am new to stick drives so I think it’s correct that I can only insert it one way due to the M-key (my port only has one divider, unlike the memory stick).

I don’t have a standoff so the stick is in but at a slight angle.

The PC has no operating system yet so is it correct that a blank drive should show up in the BIOS at least? It shows the m.2 slot as being empty currently. Or is it potentially readable as is, but needs something on it to format it?

The plan is to chuck Debian on it to boot into, via a thumb drive, but I wanted to make sure it was at least installed correctly (I mean, it isn’t because it should have a standoff).

If when my standoff kit arrives, the drive still doesn’t show in the BIOS what would you recommend I do next?

EDIT: thank you so much for the advice so far! I added a standoff and I can now see 500Gb in the BIOS. Truthfully it might have already been recognised, there is a section for M.2 in the BIOS which was reading empty but it also lists primary hard drive and it’s showing up there. Now to install me some Debian

  • adarzaEnglish
    7·
    3 days ago

    don’t try to power on the system, even for ‘testing’, without the m2 card properly slotted and secured.

    are you certain that the slot is m-key? see this page for help identifying b and m keys.

    if it is m-key, are you also certain that the system supports sata via that m2 slot? sata support via m-key m2 is system dependent and not guaranteed to be there. the usual upgrade for m-key m2 is nvme ssd.

    if your slot is actually “mSATA” (not “m2” or more accurately, “m.2”) you need an entirely different ssd card.