I have a TUF Z370-PRO GAMING with an nvme sed opal 2 samgung (doesn't matter if it is this drive or any other opal 2 drive). while the drive is locked on this specific board it is not given as a boot option and I have to boot through a USB stick to load the pba image and unlock the drive then it becomes available in bios. I have other boards no issues at all. Support is useless as they won't forward the case to engineering and every tech you get to upfront is clueless. I have a sabertooth z77 works perfect and pretty much every other system I manage with SED drives. Last reply I got from support was they do not support SED drives, complete joke. Posting here with hopes that somebody at higher ASUS support can see this and hopefully get a bios update. I wished the board was still up for return with Amazon, will do it instantly.
SED drives always run encrypted, they just have two options locked or unlocked. If the drive is locked a PBA image (preboot authentication image) is required to be loaded at startup area of drive. This image is what loads when the bios boots the drive. The image takes over from there and basically just asks you for password to unlock OPAL 2 drive and then OS boots. But this board while drive is locked does not show up at all in bios. Funny thing is that if you decide to do let's say a windows install , the drive is visible in windows install part where it asks for you to choose a drive and partition, of course windows can't access the drive because it is locked. But if you choose the drive and decide to partition, it goes ahead and wipes any other drive you have in SATA port. Really nasty bug. So here we have two issues with current bios for this board.
My zabertooth z77 works perfect with either sata or nvme opal2. I can boot nvme drives in a z77 chipset by modifying bios and loading nvme modules from a z87 chipset.
So here Iam stuck with this board and support that gets you knowhere. Hopefully somebody in Asus can see this and push it forward. Contact me for case number if needed.
