[SOLVED] NVME SSD as a boot drive on asus z97-p motherboard

[Misho Basheleishvili]

Hello,

I am planning to buy kingston a400 m.2 ssd and I have asus z97-p mobo, I keep hearing that my motherboard won't be able to support the ssd as a boot drive so I need advice with it as I intend to use it as a boot drive. My bios is updated.

Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

Hello,

I am planning to buy kingston a400 m.2 ssd and I have asus z97-p mobo, I keep hearing that my motherboard won't be able to support the ssd as a boot drive so I need advice with it as I intend to use it as a boot drive. My bios is updated.

Thanks

https://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/a400-solid-state-drive
Being an M.2 imparts zero performance benefit over a standard 2.5" SATA III drive.
Which WILL work natively on your motherboard.

It is the same drive, just in a different package.

As far as booting from a drive in that port...almost no drives of that vintage had that capability.
Only with a subsequent BIOS update might that have been possible.

Looking through all the BIOS updates, I see no mention of that capability being added.

 

[Misho Basheleishvili]

yes but i dont want another drive in the case, space wise i prefer m.2 if possible

 

[Maxxify]

This might be one of the rare cases where the board supports PCIe drives but not NVMe (only AHCI). You can tell by the support list. Some PCIe drives would work, for example the 950 Pro (with OPROM) or AHCI variants of XP941/SM951. NVMe drives would require a BIOS mod (if possible) or the Clover EFI workaround. Also, of course, M.2 SATA drives would work - the Kingston A400 is M.2 SATA, not NVMe.

 

[Misho Basheleishvili]

I am still confused about the topic, there is this article about asus adding nvme support to this mobo but i am still not sure if ill be able to boot from it..