[SOLVED] NVME Extremely slow boot

[Aletdownofstate]

I've recently fitted an M.2 NVME to my machine and I'm experiencing extremely slow boot times (1m 30 -2 minutes)

Post lasts about as long as it always has (a few seconds,) then the windows icon loading screen lasts upwards of 90 seconds before getting into the desktop.

Fast boot is enabled.

Windows 10 Pro
Asus ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming
Ryzen 9 3900X
32GB DDR4 3200
RTX 2080S
Kingston A2000 250GB

NVME is in slot M.2_1. No USB drives plugged in, though performance is the same regardless.

Some context for how I got to where I am with it. Installed the drive, assigned a letter in Windows, used Macrium Reflect to clone my C: to it, went into the BIOS and set it as the default boot device.

Crystal Disk Mark shows speeds consistent with what it should be.

I presume it's going to be something I need to change in to the BIOS to get it working properly, but I'm stumped as to what that is. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

Cloned from what other drive?
How full is this A2000?
Are there any other drives in this system?

 

[Aletdownofstate]

Cloned from what other drive?
How full is this A2000?
Are there any other drives in this system?

My original C: boot drive, a SATA SSD.

A2000 is at about 180/250GB after the cloning, was brand new and empty prior to that.

2 x SATA SSD
1 x SATA HDD
1 x M.2 (The one in question)

 

[USAFRet]

Have you installed the NVMe driver for this particular Kingston?
Disconnect all other drives and see how it boots up.
Install and run the Kingston SSD Manager. See about a possible firmware update, and run whatever diagnostics that has.


This is unlikely to be a BIOS setting issue.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, please show us a screencap of the current Disk Management window.

 

[Aletdownofstate]

Kingston SSD Manager reports that the firmware is up to date.

Everything I can find on Kingston's website points to the driver being included in Windows from 8 onwards.

The drivers for this drive are available for Windows 8 and higher and Server 2012R2 and higher. They can be downloaded within the installation or are already built into the OS. We do not support using this drive with Windows 7 or below.

 

[USAFRet]

Right.
Since it is "working", probably not.
But some manufacturers have their own that runs in place of the Windows thing.

 

[Aletdownofstate]

Yeah, I believe Samsung has their own driver?

I'm genuinely stumped. Could a fresh Windows install on it rather than a clone potentially fix it?

I missed you asking for the Disk Management screen before, so here it is.

 

[USAFRet]

Yeah, I believe Samsung has their own driver?

I'm genuinely stumped. Could a fresh Windows install on it rather than a clone potentially fix it?


I missed you asking for the Disk Management screen before, so here it is.

Which physical drive is the new SSD?

At the end of the clone process, did you:
Power off
Disconnect all other drives
Power up with ONLY the new one connected
?

This is sort of a critical step, and I don't know why they all leave that off.

 

[Aletdownofstate]

After the process finished I restarted my machine, but definitely did not disconnect any drives.

The new M.2 is C:

 

[USAFRet]

After the process finished I restarted my machine, but definitely did not disconnect any drives.

The new M.2 is C:

If you were to return the system back to original config, without the new drive...does it boot up?
I'm thinking a redo of the clone process may be in order.

This time...physical disconnection of the other drives at the end of the process.

-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------

 

[Aletdownofstate]

It should, I haven't wiped the old boot drive yet, in case something like this happened.

I'll give that a try and report back shortly 🤞

 

[Aletdownofstate]

Completed the re-cloning, following your instructions and there's definitely a change.

A cold startup takes 25s~ from pressing power to being on the desktop, considering it's a cheap, low performance M.2 I can live with that for now. A restart is more or less the same as it was before though, taking 2m07s last time I did it. I presume that restarts don't get to use fast boot for whatever reason?

EDIT 1

Interestingly, I've just plugged my other drives back in and it's back to taking forever to boot again. I can only assume that it's somehow regressing back to using the old one to boot.

EDIT 2

Formatting the original boot SSD now seems to have resolved the issues and it seems to start up quickly every time now.

Cheers for the help.