Aurora R11, HDD upgrade

Consider buying an external hard drive to store files and backups. Internal drives are not accessible when the computer fails. All computers fail sooner or later.

Read through these Aurora R11 upgrade threads.

Quick easy way to add more drives and get faster ones in is a X16 adapter or a PCI slot  

PCI Single Slot

X14 4 Slot 

The x16 adapter linked above will not work. That is, it will only support 1 M2 drive on the Aurora, not 4.  The Aurora does not support lane bifurcation, which is why you will only be able to see 1 m2 drive.  So there's no point in paying $51 to use this in the Aurora, as you can get a single adapter for under $10, which is the max supported. 

Also, the Aurora R11 does not come with an x16 slot (the x16 slots are powered at x8 only). 

At the bottom of the case there are drive bays for two 2.5" drives.

The R11 includes the power cables for any modern drive you'd put in, but you need to buy the SATA data cables yourself.

If you need lots of storage space, it's usually most efficient to just buy a large, external USB drive. If you really need more in the machine itself, you can replace your 3.5" HDD drive with a larger drive, and/or you can put 2.5" drives in as well if you want. But if you might want to access them a lot, such as if you want to install games on them, you probably should do SSD drives, even though they'll cost more.

@r72019  keeps putting me in my place.(definitely smarter then me) I keep forgetting were talking about dell and there limited upgrade abilities. I have bought my last Dell for sure because of this issue. 

How ever if you say they only support one m2 why you say he can use the single one? 

On my R8 installed a single and migrated my OS on a larger m2 and it seen both just fine. 

You can use multiple m2 drives in the R11, but they have to be in different pcie expansion slots (one drive per slot).  

If you want to add multiple m2 drives to a single x16 or x8 slot, the pc bios needs to support lane bifurcation to effectively treat one slot as more than one slot.  Or you need a switch which runs around several hundred dollars. 

Ah gotcha. I also forgot they run at 8x not 16. 

Hi everyone. I'm also a happy owner of the Aurora R11 now and waiting for the delivery soon. But I have some questions. I recently sold my Asus G703GX Laptop. In that laptop, there were 2 slots for intel760 SSDs(512GB) for Raid0 setup. That setup was essentially the fastest ever created in a laptop(as they say) with an astounding 8.7GB speeds. I also had 2TB Firecuda SSD(2.5-inchSATA)on that machine. I sold the laptop but these drives are with me now. Since I already know Aurora R11 doesn't support  bifurcation, I'm wondering how can I make Raid 0 work on it? Can I buy 2 separate adapters 1 for PCIe x4 and one on another slot x8/x16? I mean does it have those slots empty because the RTX3080 seems huge on this board. If I'm able to do so, how do I set up RAID0 on a bios level? Or just installing the drivers from the intel website would suffice? Another question can I connect my Firecuda to the SATA connector? I ordered the one with 1TB Nvme only. I'm not ready to invest a couple of hundreds to get an adapter with an ASM switch. Any help is much appreciated.

Hi,

I have an Aurora R11 with 1 TB M.2 SSD and a 1 TB HDD.

If your Aurora R11 is similar to mine, there should be 2 additional 2.5" SATA drive caddies. I added 2 Samsung 860 Evo SATA SSDs (also bought 90° SATA cables) there, and plugged them to the black SATA slots on the motherboard.

(The light blue SATA port on the motherboard is too slow for SSDs.)

Hello. I wanted to add a third 2.5 mechanical drive. I opened and noticed the power cable but no blue sata cable. So I understand that I have to purchase one. Where do I connect both ends? Can you point out to me where I must plug the end of the sata cable that goes to the board? Please help and thank you. 

@R11 man wrote:

Hello. I wanted to add a third 2.5 mechanical drive. I opened and noticed the power cable but no blue sata cable. So I understand that I have to purchase one. Where do I connect both ends?

Here is the Aurora R11 service manual description of the connections to the 2.5 hard drive.

#3 photo shows SATA and power connections to drive

---

@R11 man wrote:

Hello. I wanted to add a third 2.5 mechanical drive. I opened and noticed the power cable but no blue sata cable. So I understand that I have to purchase one. Where do I connect both ends? Can you point out to me where I must plug the end of the sata cable that goes to the board? Please help and thank you. 

---

• 4) SATA 6 Gbps drive connector (SATA1)
• 5) SATA 6 Gbps drive connector (SATA2)
• 6) SATA 6 Gbps drive connector (SATA3)
• 7) SATA 6 Gbps drive connector (SATA4)                     As shown in the Aurora R11 Service Manual--
• SATA motherboard connections 4,5,6,7