Question Does my motherboard support booting from an M.2 SSD?

Nov 14, 2019
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Hello and thank you for reading!

I recently bought a Seagate FireCuda 510 SSD 2TB, M.2 PCIe and I'm having trouble installing windows and booting from the SSD.
I am using an ASUS maximus hero VII motherboard and I'm beginning to question if my motherboard support booting from a M.2 SSD.

If anyone knows if it is actually possible for me to boot windows using this motherboard and M.2 SSD, I would greatly appreciate the help.

If it is possible, any advice on the best way to go about getting it to work is also very welcome.

Thanks in advance!
 
Nov 14, 2019
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*1: The PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCIEX4_3) shares bandwith with PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot. The default setting is Auto Mode, which automatically optimizes the system bandwidth. If you install a PCIe 2.0 x4 device, the system will automatically detect and disable PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot.

Try going to bios and set to m.2
Hi, thanks for the reply

So I've set my motherboard to M.2 and tried going into boot options to boot from M.2. however it doesn't seem to detect it. I also have 2 HDD drives installed, 1 with windows 10 on it which is currently the main drive. I'm not sure if this interferes.
I basicly copied the main drive and am now trying to boot from the M.2
 
Nov 14, 2019
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that the boot priority, does it see it in storage?
how did you clone windows 10 from hdd to m.2?

I used a third party application to copy my HDD to SSD. The computer, when running with the main HDD drive, detects the M.2 SSD and I was able to use it. This is why I'm confused as to why the motherboard can't detect it.
I can look up the application if it relevant information :)
If you're asking me if I can see the Bios can detect the M.2 SSD in storage, I had a quick look and I'm not seeing anywhere. But I'm not really sure what I am looking for if that is indeed your question.
 

USAFRet

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  1. Cloning from a SATA drive to an NVMe drive can be problematic, no matter which drives and motherboard.
  2. Older boards may not have the capability to boot from an NVMe drive.
  3. If your motherboard only has a PCIe 2.0 port, then any current NVMe drive is mostly a waste. You'll see almost no performance benefit over a SATA III drive.
 
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I used a third party application to copy my HDD to SSD. The computer, when running with the main HDD drive, detects the M.2 SSD and I was able to use it. This is why I'm confused as to why the motherboard can't detect it.
I can look up the application if it relevant information :)
If you're asking me if I can see the Bios can detect the M.2 SSD in storage, I had a quick look and I'm not seeing anywhere. But I'm not really sure what I am looking for if that is indeed your question.
  1. Cloning from a SATA drive to an NVMe drive can be problematic, no matter which drives and motherboard.
  2. Older boards may not have the capability to boot from an NVMe drive.
  3. If your motherboard only has a PCIe 2.0 port, then any current NVMe drive is mostly a waste. You'll see almost no performance benefit over a SATA III drive.

Am I understanding correctly the best thing to do would be to buy a new motherboard?
If so, what exactly am I looking for to make sure I can boot from the M.2 SSD?

I would like to mention what I would do next to hear your opinion on it:
My next plan of attack would be installing a UEFI bootable version of Windows on a USB, disabling CMD, only run the M.2 SSD and try to boot from the usb and install it onto the SSD
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Am I understanding correctly the best thing to do would be to buy a new motherboard?
If so, what exactly am I looking for to make sure I can boot from the M.2 SSD?

I would like to mention what I would do next to hear your opinion on it:
My next plan of attack would be installing a UEFI bootable version of Windows on a USB, disabling CMD, only run the M.2 SSD and try to boot from the usb and install it onto the SSD

What is your aim here?
A 'new motherboard' basically means a whole new system.
CPU, RAM, drives, etc, etc.

What do you have now?
What do you use this system for?
Changing the whole system just for different drives is usually not a good way forward.
 
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What is your aim here?
A 'new motherboard' basically means a whole new system.
CPU, RAM, drives, etc, etc.

What do you have now?
What do you use this system for?
Changing the whole system just for different drives is usually not a good way forward.

The aim is to have windows and programs installed on the M.2 SSD so that my pc is not bottlenecked by storage. I am currently working with 2 very slow 1tb HDD's and noticed my pc becoming sluggish become of them.
I bought the above mentioned SSD not understanding fully what I was getting into, thinking it wouldn't be that difficult to reinstall the OS and other programs on it.
As far as my PC specs goes, I can look them up tomorrow if necessary (apologies, I had to leave and don't know them from the top of my head)
 
Nov 14, 2019
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The aim is to have windows and programs installed on the M.2 SSD so that my pc is not bottlenecked by storage. I am currently working with 2 very slow 1tb HDD's and noticed my pc becoming sluggish become of them.
I bought the above mentioned SSD not understanding fully what I was getting into, thinking it wouldn't be that difficult to reinstall the OS and other programs on it.
As far as my PC specs goes, I can look them up tomorrow if necessary (apologies, I had to leave and don't know them from the top of my head)
To add: I am investing in this PC because I basically want to use it for the rest of my life and upgrade/repair as I go. I use for everyday work and gaming.
 

USAFRet

Titan
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To add: I am investing in this PC because I basically want to use it for the rest of my life and upgrade/repair as I go. I use for everyday work and gaming.
There comes a time in most hardware...you can't continue to use it without a real upgrade and change of parts.
A motherboard that only has a PCIe 2.0 M.2 port is past that point.

To fully use a current NVMe drive, it needs a new motherboard.
Which also means new CPU, new RAM, almost certainly a new PSU.
Hey....its a whole new PC!
 
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So you're suggesting in order to use my M.2 SSD NVMe as a windows bootable drive I have to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and most likely my PSU (I can reuse the RAM?) because my motherboard only has a PCIe 2.0 and requires a PCIe 3.0?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
So you're suggesting in order to use my M.2 SSD NVMe as a windows bootable drive I have to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and most likely my PSU (I can reuse the RAM?) because my motherboard only has a PCIe 2.0 and requires a PCIe 3.0?
No, it was more of a performance upgrade.

The M.2 drive you bought will only run at about 1/2 speed in that motherboard.
Not any faster than a SATA III drive.

Can you send that drive back for a refund?
 
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No, it was more of a performance upgrade.

The M.2 drive you bought will only run at about 1/2 speed in that motherboard.
Not any faster than a SATA III drive.

Can you send that drive back for a refund?
I can't. Also I wouldn't mind it not performing 100% as long as it's faster than my current HDD drives. Think of a cheap 1tb HDD drive, that is my main drive basically.
Is the 1/2 speed M.2 drive still a performance upgrade?
 
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First get screenshot from Disk Management. You may not have cloned your OS drive properly.
2nd - make sure, you have updated BIOS of your board to latest version.

BTW - PCIE 3.0 x4 M.2 at PCIE 2.0 x4 speeds is still ~3 times faster than sata SSD (on sequential transfers).

That's reassuring to hear, thank you!
I will get to it tomorrow and post the update here. :)
 
The specs do say M2 slot "Max 10GB/s Data transfer" , that is almost twice as fast as a SATA III. Also if you cloned it with the other hard drives connected it may have caused issues. You can Clone it again from the original drive then disconnect the original drive and try to boot by itself. When I cloned mine I put my original drive up as a backup on the shelf.
 
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buying a new motherbrd for a 4th gen intel CPU would be pointless because either you will run into the same problem or you would find it dfficult to find an old Z97 motherbord that came with an M.2 slot.

i would check the motherbord manual to see if there is any info on what storage sizes the M.2 would support. i had a previos gen motherbord that had a Z77 chipset and a 3rd gen intel i5 and it had an M.2 slot but it was only to be used as a cache drive so the storage size was limited to 64GB
 
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First get screenshot from Disk Management. You may not have cloned your OS drive properly.
2nd - make sure, you have updated BIOS of your board to latest version.

BTW - PCIE 3.0 x4 M.2 at PCIE 2.0 x4 speeds is still ~3 times faster than sata SSD (on sequential transfers).
Here is a screenshot of diskmanagement
https://prnt.sc/pxi5gu
I also took a screenshot of my computer specs (bit chaotic maybe but should cover most of it)
https://prnt.sc/pxi9wm

More info:
I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to copy the main HDD drive to the M.2 SSD drive.
I am updating my drives right now using the Driver Easy application and will check if the bios now detects the M.2 SSD after it finished.

Again, thank you all for trying to help :)