[SOLVED] Can't boot from my 970 Evo NVME M.2 SSD on ASRock Fatal1ty B450 GAMING K4 Motherboard

[PhoenicianWarrior]

I used a cloning software to clone my 850 Evo SSD which has my Windows 10 OS on it to my new Samsung 970 EVO Plus Series PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD, but I cannot boot from the 970 Evo. I installed the driver for the 970 Evo on Samsung's website as well. When I manage to select the boot override to boot from the 970 Evo I get an error saying "reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key". What do I need to do to be able to boot from my NVME M.2 SSD?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Is it necessary to disconnect the 850? I would like to keep it and reformat it as a storage drive.

For first boot from cloned drive it's necessary to disconnect old drive. This is essential or you'll have to redo cloning.
Only after successful boot from OS on new drive you can reconnect the old drive.

 

[PhoenicianWarrior]

So I temporarily gave up on cloning software and tried to install Win 10 on the 970 and had a few issues, but after disabling CSM and enabling Secure Boot in the BIOS I managed to install the OS on the 970. Now that I know it works and I can boot from the 970, I would still like to be able to clone over my 850 instead of manually doing the process if possible.

A side note: I noticed when booting I have to set my boot priority to my Toshiba drive (my hdd storage drive), because neither my 850 or 970 show on the boot priority list. Is this because only my storage drive is set as the boot drive? Either way, during boot up it gives me an option to boot up Win 10 on the 850 or Win 10 on the 970. Would this small problem be resolved by adding another bootloader entry for either of my SSd's?

 

[PhoenicianWarrior]

For first boot from cloned drive it's necessary to disconnect old drive. This is essential or you'll have to redo cloning.
Only after successful boot from OS on new drive you can reconnect the old drive.

I am seeing this after installing a new Win 10 copy. SDM still gives an error when trying to clone. Should I just try cloning again with Macrium Reflect and try this method?
During my initial troubleshooting, I do recall unplugging both my 850 and my HDD storage drive and just keeping the 970 in but it still wouldnt boot.

 

[USAFRet]

So I temporarily gave up on cloning software and tried to install Win 10 on the 970 and had a few issues, but after disabling CSM and enabling Secure Boot in the BIOS I managed to install the OS on the 970. Now that I know it works and I can boot from the 970, I would still like to be able to clone over my 850 instead of manually doing the process if possible.

A side note: I noticed when booting I have to set my boot priority to my Toshiba drive (my hdd storage drive), because neither my 850 or 970 show on the boot priority list. Is this because only my storage drive is set as the boot drive? Either way, during boot up it gives me an option to boot up Win 10 on the 850 or Win 10 on the 970. Would this small problem be resolved by adding another bootloader entry for either of my SSd's?

Either way, during boot up it gives me an option to boot up Win 10 on the 850 or Win 10 on the 970.

When you did this install, the 970 was the ONLY drive physically connected? Does not appear so.

If not, redo the install.

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[SkyNetRising]

I would still like to be able to clone over my 850 instead of manually doing the process if possible.

Just redo cloning and use bcdboot command to fix bootloader as suggested in post #24.

If you want to make 970 evo bootable, then you have to create bootloader partition on it manually.
It is done this way:
1. Make enough free space for new bootloader partition by shrinking existing partition on the drive. 500MB is enough.
Then create a new partition.

For UEFI system (GPT disk) create Efi system, fat32 formatted partition.​

For legacy boot system (MBR disk) create primary, active, NTFS formatted partition.​

2. Then use bcdboot comand to create bootloader files on the partition.