Use Boot SSD w/o free SATA Port

[FlyingPersian]

Hello,

I recently upgraded to TN 12 and decided to use a SSD as a boot medium instead of my 2 SanDisk USB sticks. I'm now dealing with the issue of not having a free SATA port on my MB (Supermicro X10SLM-F). I planned to use a PCIe M.2 SATA adapter with a M.2 SATA SSD, but turns out this is more complicated than I thought. Seems like when I use a SATA SSD, I still need a SATA port to connect the PCIe card to the MB. Alternatively, I could use a NVMe which afaik uses the PCIe connection. Problem is: My MB doesn't officially support NVMe. There where a few solutions here and here. The first one would be my preferrred choice, as it doesn't need a modded BIOS. I tend to break things, so I don't wanna mess with the MB's BIOS :P

The no-mod option is to use rEFInd from a supported boot device (probably USB) to load an NVMe driver for UEFI and run bootx64.efi on the NVMe disk.

This is the part where I'm struggling. I found a few tutorials here and there, but I'm not too comfortable with them. My questions now are:

a) Does anyone have a reliable tutorial to do this with a Supermicro MB (preferably mine)?
b) Is there a not too expensive option of using a SSD somehow out of the box with some expansion card (i.e. SATA card?)?

Kind Regards

 

[HoneyBadger]

Skip the NVMe boot battle and use a USB to SATA converter - either a cable one to a regular 2.5" or if you have an M.2 2230/2242 you can use one of the enclosure-on-a-stick models like below:

https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-External-Adapter-Support-Laptop/dp/B077S6M3QL

IMO if you're going to burn a PCIe slot converting to NVMe, use it for a performance role rather than a boot device.

 

[FlyingPersian]

Asked and answered, thank you!