I use the SSD in the Dual M.2 Adapter as a scratch drive. It’s where I store all my music and downloads. I dual boot and mainly use auto set Windows 11 as boot OS and delve into Fedora once in a while. However, every time I then go back to Windows 11 from Fedora, it forgets the SSD in the adapter. The only fix I know at the moment is to install the most current FW16 driver updates in Windows 11 and restart the laptop. Is there some sort of setting I need to change in the BIOS to make it so I don’t have to do that every time?
So I have 2 SSDs on the motherboard and 1 in the expansion bay dual adapter. My BIOS setting is set up to automatically boot into the 2280 drive in the mother board that has W11. In order to boot into Fedora (2230 drive in the motherboard) I would have to spam the F12 key, pick the 2230 from the drive list and hit fedora on the next menu. I usually pick the first one on the list. This might be a learning opportunity for me to understand if this is the correct one to pick.
Sorry, I forgot to mention and the thread won’t let me edit my original post details that in order to temporarily fix the issue I have to download the BIOS update for the 16 and NOT the driver update. I can reboot and turn on/off into Windows 11 as usual and it will still recognize the expansion bay drive but the moment I manually boot into Fedora, it forgets the expansion bay SSD. I would then have to install the BIOS update again.
This sounds like a firmware issue. Does a complete power cycle not reset the state so Fedora can see the drives?
There is a GitHub for Framework BIOS issues. I wonder if someone has a bug reported there or maybe a new one maybe needs to be started.
I do not remember if support was brought into the loop on this so they have another datapoint. Surely this may have happened to other users who are dual booting with the Framework Laptop 16 and the expansion bay m.2 drives.
The SSD on the expansion bay was formatted set up in windows. Is Fedora supposed to see it as well? I got the Fedora SSD from my Steam Deck when I upgraded its internals from 64Gb to 1TB. It’s mainly a “playing around” OS from time to time for me so I can get used to it. To me if Fedora is supposed to read it but can’t, it’s fine. I just looked on GitHub and don’t see any similar problems there either. I’ll post it there as well.
I think it is suppose to see the drive if it is formatted as NTFS. I have not spend much time with Fedora outside of a Live USB. I know when I boot over to Ubuntu on my Framework it sees the bitlocked partition and tells me it is locked.
It is odd that it shows up after the BIOS update but when rebooting and changing OS it disappears.
I would have a couple of queries - what BIOS are you running? When the expansion bay board came out it was necessary to update the BIOS to use it. I can’t recall the minimum BIOS rev it requires, but you should be able to find it by going back through forum postings.
Second does it actually show in Fedora File Manager and when you click on it then it asks for a password or something? I have a 2230 drive on my FL16 with Windows on it, and it doesn’t automatically log in on Fedora because I haven’t done the necessary fiddle to some file somewhere that tells Fedora to automatically log it in. When I click on it I then have to enter my password to access it.
When i first posted this question, the latest and installed BIOS was 4.03. There was a recent update to that in 4.04 and I installed it the moment I got the notification and the problem still persists. I have not made any drastic changes in the BIOS settings other than setting the mxx charge to 60% as I mostly use this laptop at home docked and changing the priority boot to my 2280 Windows 11 drive. This means if I turn on the laptop, it will auto load into W11. I would need to force the laptop into the BIOS during boot if I want Fedora on the 2230. That is the expected set up I want and it works up until the EB drive is involved.
New issue just came up and I’m most confident that it’s stemming from the recent BIOS update. If my laptop has been off or sleeping for a long time such as me turning it off before heading to bed, it forgets the expansion bay SSD.
I’m going to do a test and update the bios under the basic condition: laptop plugged into the wall with the lid open. I updated the BIOS before while it was docked with the lid closed. I just updated it now, undocked, and lid open. I’ll use it as normal today, will turn it off before I go to bed, and I’ll get back to you about it tomorrow.
Earlier today, I was on 4.04. I closed my laptop, left work, and when I got home, it already forgot the ssd. I reverted back to 4.03, I was away for 2 hours for groceries, came back, and everything was fine just like everything I said in the original post.
So for now, I stay away from 4.04 that’s for sure causing more issues than I had before regarding the expansion bay drive. Now I’m back to simply the “return from Fedora boot” ssd dementia issue.
Maybe issue could be fedora itself? Since it seems laptop is reading the GRUB boot loader just fine from 2nd SSD. but once you select fedora that is where it gets lost and drops expansion bay?
If so then issue looks rather an fedora problem than bios or so.
To confirm it, can you try installing Ubuntu or any other linux on the SSD and see if issue continues?
If issue remains, try a different SSD and see if that also causes it. Some times it’s SSD itself.
but once you select fedora that is where it gets lost and drops expansion bay?
Yes.
To confirm it, can you try installing Ubuntu or any other linux on the SSD and see if issue continues?
Sure. I was really thinking about it a few weeks ago but have been busy lately. I don’t mind re-wiping the drive again because I use the installation of Linux on that drive as sort of way to get accustomed to their OS again. I haven’t used Ubuntu since I built a PC for a high school project almost 2 decades ago.
If issue remains, try a different SSD and see if that also causes it. Some times it’s SSD itself.
It’s the only SSD i have at that size and with the prices of it right now aside from the 1TB one on my Steam Deck (I put in alot of hours into putting non-steam games and emulators on that drive so using that as a test is a “no go”), I most likey wont be getting another one soon. I was just wondering if there are alternatives to the temporary solution I found. But thanks anyways. I will install ubuntu probably later tonight or tomorrow night and I’ll let you know the results. By the way, quick question, could I just wipe the drive during the installation rather than just doing it through Windows 11? It’s been a while since I installed an OS.
Boot up Ubuntu on a USB drive, within the installer pick that it should use whole drive and that should wipe it for you and setup new boot partitions etc and copy Ubuntu to it.
So I installed Ubuntu and updated everything afterwards. I rebooted and it went to the GRUB page and I clicked on the Windows 11 drive and the expansion bay drive was still there! Not sure what happened with the fedora install. I might reinstall it this weekend to make sure. Also I went to the bios so that I could set the default boot drive and for some reason Fedora is still there. I just wanted to let you know that. Change the setting to boot the first drive on the list which is Windows 11. So the order is this:
Windows 11
Ubuntu
Expansion Bay drive [Disabled]
Fedora [Disabled]
I’m installed BIOS 4.04 and the drive is still there. One thing to note is that when I first installed add Ubuntu, it now sees the Windows 11 ssd but not the expansion bay drive. I never thought about the expansion bay drive being also supposed to be seen for both OS’s until someone mentioned it here. I could say my initial issue was solved but now I’m interested in getting the expansion bay drive to be seen in Linux.
You won’t be able to read a windows NTFS in linux because linux does not support NTFS.
If you use a command to check disks or disk manager in linux you can probably see the windows drive there but just as unknown drive due to NTFS not being supported.
There is probably software you could use to get NTFS supported in linux.
Update: quick check up, it can probably read NTFS drive if it has ntfs-3g support.
Also keep in mind if you want to read/access windows ssd you also gota disable fast boot on windows ssd or it will lock the drive into read only.
About Fedora still being in boot could be due to it’s been added to the secure boot list.
Thanks for the quick response! No worries about linux not reading NTFS. Ok, so I’m in a plug one hole and another opens. When I said everything works, I was in BIOS 4.03. To fully make sure it works, I went to 4.04 (the latest one) and seems to remember the expansion bay drive whenever it boots as I wanted either from restarting Windows 11 or going back to W11 from Ubuntu. Great, until i put the laptop to sleep in W11. I wake it up from sleep and iCloud is yelling at me saying that it can’t find the iCloud drive (located in the expansion bay). Went to the Explorer and it’s gone again and can be fixed with a simple reboot. Due to other matters I had to attend to, I had to wait until the following day (today) to go back to BIOS 4.03 and see if that sleep issue still occurs there.
Microsoft tells the system to go into the sleep state and the components obey like they should except they are not woken up after resuming.
It is as if Windows does not know the drive or connection was there, but it was there before going to sleep, so just make a list of known devices before sleep, then upon waking probe for each one at the last known address (this is just logical thinking, what MS programmers are actually doing is another thing)
I have just resorted to using hibernate on Windows 11 for anything with a battery because of all the buggy garbage with “modern standby” or whatever it has morphed into from actually going to sleep.
Honestly if it is this hard the industry should just stop calling it sleep and call it low power mode. Sleep is resting until poked by something to wake up.
P.S. Glad to hear it is working mostly correctly again after freshly installing Ubuntu.
That’s the thing. Prior to getting my 16 there were already many reports with the 13 about the sleep issues and how macs know how to do it best. I’ve had my 16 since launch and sleep mode is like an 8 ball in which I don’t know how it reacts or get a beat on the pattern on how it behaves when I wake it up. Sometimes I put it to sleep and the next day it lost 10%-20% of the battery while other times it won’t wake up only to realize that the battery somehow drained completely overnight. I mostly use mine docked with the lid closed but there are numerous times that it wakes up by itself which probably explains the previous statement. This is why FW is pushing bios updates to disable the keyboard when the lid is closed to prevent accidental wake-ups.
