[SOLVED] Help with installing Windows 10 on M.2

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tango123

Jan 7, 2019
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Hello, I recently finished building my PC (first time builder) however for one reason or another the M.2 wasn't initially recognised. I have since then formatted it and it appears but Windows 10 installed to my SSD. I'm wondering if there is a way to have windows on my M.2 instead. My motherboard is Aorus Master z390.
 
Solution
onespeedbiker
There are twp basic types of drives that will fit in an M2 slot; sata or PCIe (aka NVMe); yours is PCIe. The difference is sata is considered a older legacy technology, while PCIe is the newer technology that replaces the old Bios with something called UEFI. Much of this you don't really need to know. What you do need to know is your ssd needs to be partitioned differently, using a partitioning system called GPT and then formatted as usual. When you are installing windows, the set up allow you to use GBT, which is necessary if you want to boot from your new ssd. Here is a link to make it clearer. https://www.reneelab.com/mbr-or-gpt.html

There are some important UEFI settings in the BIOS, but the default settings are usually...
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There are twp basic types of drives that will fit in an M2 slot; sata or PCIe (aka NVMe); yours is PCIe. The difference is sata is considered a older legacy technology, while PCIe is the newer technology that replaces the old Bios with something called UEFI. Much of this you don't really need to know. What you do need to know is your ssd needs to be partitioned differently, using a partitioning system called GPT and then formatted as usual. When you are installing windows, the set up allow you to use GBT, which is necessary if you want to boot from your new ssd. Here is a link to make it clearer. https://www.reneelab.com/mbr-or-gpt.html

There are some important UEFI settings in the BIOS, but the default settings are usually all you need.
 
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Solution
onespeedbiker said:
There are twp basic types of drives that will fit in an M2 slot; sata or PCIe (aka NVMe); yours is PCIe. The difference is sata is considered a older legacy technology, while PCIe is the newer technology that replaces the old Bios with something called UEFI. Much of this you don't really need to know. What you do need to know is your ssd needs to be partitioned differently, using a partitioning system called GPT and then formatted as usual. When you are installing windows, the set up allow you to use GBT, which is necessary if you want to boot from your new ssd. Here is a link to make it clearer. https://www.reneelab.com/mbr-or-gpt.html

There are some important UEFI settings in the BIOS, but the default settings are usually all you need.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. I'm not sure how to get to the Windows setup menu, do you mind clarifying?
 
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I think I would start all over.
Disconnect all drives excepting the m.2 pcie drive.
Install windows on that, it is the only drive it can see.

If you have any other drives attached, windows will put some hidden recovery partitions on the second drive, making it all but impossible to ever boot without the second drive present.
You can attach the second drive later.
 
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I would first disconnect your m.2 and boot windows to make sure, as mentioned above, all of windows is on the drive. If it goes well, you should be able to clone Windows to your m.2 drive. I am not familar with the ReneeBecca program, but some cloning programs will not clone to a smaller drive, even if there is enough room for just the data. Still, it would be better to do a clean install, as cloning does not always go well, often you will have to reinstall some drivers that won't install automatically after booting up the cloned drive.
 
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Thanks everyone for your help. I ended up following the instructions in the link and cloned my windows 10 to the m.2 drive. I also checked that Window will boot up from the m.2 drive.
 
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