SSD PCI expansion card with 4 SSD slots from third-party suppliers

German
1

Hello

I have a TVS-H874,

it has 2 PCI slots, and I would like to use one of them for an expansion card with 4 NVMe slots. The cards offered by Qnap are, firstly, EOL (end of life), and secondly, physically too long.

If I now use a third-party card, the OS only recognizes one NVMe and hides the other 3.

Why is that? This is neither user-friendly nor reasonable, especially since Qnap does not have its own solution.

There are enough guides on the internet to work around the problem, but I would strongly prefer if there were an “official” solution from Qnap.

2

Do you mean the card itself or the slot? (The slot is open at the back and thus accommodates any slot length)

*edit
When I check dual QNAP NVMe (+10GbE) cards on Geizhals, they’re all still available, but 4-port ones are just too big for the small NAS.

3

Hello,

you can only find out by trying.

https://www.qnap.com/de-de/how-to/faq/article/warum-kann-ich-meine-pcienvme-ssd-nicht-als-speicher-verwenden

The QM2-4P-384 just doesn’t fit, as the case is too small.

4

Hi dolbyman

The card is too long; at the end, the power connector for the motherboard gets in the way of the Qnap card.

5

Hello Becker2020

If only it were that simple—the OS proactively disables channels 1-3 for all non-QNAP cards, only channel 0 is looped through and available.

There are workarounds to change the corresponding bit in the OS or system, but this gets overwritten with every reboot or update.

I do understand that QNAP wants to push their own hardware, but that’s definitely not cool, and it’s certainly not customer-friendly either.

6

Apparently, these restrictions have been in place since QTS 4.3.4.

So, you probably only have the option to buy a QNAP card with 2 SSD slots.

7

Are the QNAP cards equipped with their own bridge chip (e.g., ASM2824), or are they cheaper bifurcation adapters?

8

I would say these are just standard, run-of-the-mill bifurcation cards:

  1. The drives appear individually and are not grouped in any way or in a RAID.
  2. If the card is installed in a PC, it’s the same.
  3. I have a Highpoint card with RAID and bootable support, which is something completely different.
  4. The Highpoint would also work in the NAS if it was configured as RAID with the SSDs in the PC beforehand.
9

I still have a QM2-4P-384 lying around, I’ll probably take a Dremel to it at some point—after all, it’s really just about 2x5mm that’s missing, so it might just barely miss the outer traces… :thinking:

10

Dear marcelall,

The internal PCIe space of TVS-hx74 is not enough for QM2-4P-384. May we ask what you plan to do with the four M.2 SSDs on NAS?

Moreover, if in the future an external M.2 NVMe SSD JBOD is supported (e.g. 4x M.2) with an optional PCIe card adapter, does it fit your needs?