Question Is it possible for select the m.2 slot you wanna boot from on my mobo?

[TheReal_ist]

I have the ASRock AB 350 Pro 4 mobo. I know I only have one Gen 3 capable m.2 slot, via looking at the manual but I couldn't figure out whether or not I could do the following.

OK so what I wanna do is use my existing nvme 120gb m.2 drive for my OS but I wanna put it on my slower second m.2 that's only got data speeds. Then I'd like to put my bigger 1tb nvme drive on the faster Gen 3 m.2 slot.

I imagine there's a way to do this I just don't wanna screw it up. So any help would be appreciated.

And yes I know "y don't u use the 1tb drive as your OS drive" I just don't want to. Plz just focus on the previous question thxs

 

[TheReal_ist]

http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/AB350 Pro4.pdf
pg 4
" Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks "

So, the M2_1 port, being the only one that can use an NVMe M.2 drive, is bootable.

The other, M2_2, ca only utilize a SATA M.2 drive.
If it were NOT bootable, the user manual would state so. It does not, ergo...it can.

Thank you man really appreciate it wanted to be sure before I bought it and fussed with it realizing it somehow doesn't support booting from the second slot.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Thank you man really appreciate it wanted to be sure before I bought it and fussed with it realizing it somehow doesn't support booting from the second slot.

It's always dicey buying a motherboard when your plan is to use it in a non-standard manner because the mfr rarely states things like that explicitly in sales literature. So you're left using logic like USAFRet did.

But I believe you could boot from the 2nd M.2 slot on a supported drive type... which would not be NVME SSD but SATA M.2 (a B-key M-key or B/M-key M.2 SATA SSD drive). The way you could know for sure is if the BIOS recognizes the drive in the attached drives list. If it does it would look for the UEFI on it and then you'd have an option to boot from it just like you could from a USB stick...or CD....or any other SATA drive. The thing is, you do have to have the board in hand to do that simple test.

EDIT: mistakenly put B-key, meant M-key M.2 SATA SSD

 

[CountMike]

Sorry but it seems that I was wrong, contacted somebody from local Asrock office and got confirmattion that in this case at least, NVMe wouldn't work in second slot, strictly SATA drive which also invalidates SATA port(s) in same circuit.

 

[Karadjgne]

Slot order doesn't matter afaik. Never has. You can stick OS on a Sata hdd with both m.2 slots populated and it'll still boot from the bootable hdd drive labeled C: that contains the OS. Bios will search all drives, no matter it's location, looking for a bootable OS drive. If more than one drive is labeled bootable with OS, you'll be given a choice as to which drive you want to use, but it's easiest just to set the OS in C: as first in drive boot order.

B: system backup libraries partition C:
C: 120Gb m.2 OS bootable pcie/nvme addin card
F: 1TB m.2 storage Gen3 NVMe m.2 slot.

Motherboard m.2 Sata port unused.