[SOLVED] Samsung Evo 970 Plus SSD returns "samsung nvm express device is not connected"

[guivn]

Hello,

I have bought a Samsung EVO 970 Plus 250Gb. Bought an USB adapter for it in order to migrate my current windows drive to it.

PC info:
HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec0xxx
Bios Mode: UEFI
Motherboard: HP 86D5 96,16

Samsung Data Migration software is able to identify the drive connected through the usb adapter and I am able to transfer the data to it using the software:

After completion of the cloning I replaced my current M.2 card with the migrated one but It returns the blue screen failing to boot afterwards.

So I thought it was missing the driver as I didn't install it before. I downloaded the Samsung Driver required to run the ssd: "Samsung_NVM_Express_Driver_3.3", but when I try to install it I have the error: "samsung nvm express device is not connected".

But it is clearly connected as I am able to see it and access it.

The image shows the driver as empty because I formatted it after it didnt boot.

After doing some research I thought the problem could be that the boot option was not AHCI and that was why I couldnt install the driver, as was the problem of many people. But HP default controller mode is AHCI as you can see on my device manager, its not even possible to change to something else on BIOS.

Any ideas on how can I solve this? There are similar threads to this but I found no solution that addresses this problem.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You have multiple drives there. Each of those drives contains a bootloader.
System needs only one bootloader. Multiple bootloaders can and will lead to confusion.

1st thing to do - determine if your original m.2 drive can boot alone (without BX500 drive connected).
Disconnect BX500 and try to boot your system.
If it boots fine, then delete EFI system partition from BX500.

Next - perform cloning.
Then replace M.2 drive with cloned and boot your system.
Note (this is important) - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive disconnected.

 

[Mr.Spock]

another option is to clone from the USB to the new drive in the m.2 slot.

or image the original drive using Acronis (since you have a WD drive) to your data drive create a boot CD or USB and restore the image to the new drive (after reboot with new one in m.2 slot, using the boot media)

both may work where the Samsung software doesn't, both cases reboot with the m.2 drive alone to insure it comes up clean.

 

[guivn]

Next - perform cloning.
Then replace M.2 drive with cloned and boot your system.
Note (this is important) - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive disconnected.

That was it. First time I cloned I restarted the computer with the new drive still in the USB adapter and the old on the M.2 slot because I wanted to check if the cloning was successful.. Then turned it off again and replaced the old for the new.

This time I followed your advice and the first boot was without the old drive connected. It worked. I don't understand why though.

Edit: Thank you very much!

 

[USAFRet]

That was it. First time I cloned I restarted the computer with the new drive still in the USB adapter and the old on the M.2 slot because I wanted to check if the cloning was successful.. Then turned it off again and replaced the old for the new.

This time I followed your advice and the first boot was without the old drive connected. It worked. I don't understand why though.

Edit: Thank you very much!

Yes, a common issue.

After the clone process, the very first thing to do is power off, disconnect the old drive, and see if it powers up with only the new drive.

Looking around inside the clone target to see if it was successful doesn't work.
Out of the 200,000 files on that drive, you can't tell if some were missing.

If the clone process finished without giving an error, either it worked, or there was a major issue that would be readily apparent.

 

[SkyNetRising]

It worked. I don't understand why though.

The problem is because of drive letters. Both - source windows partition and cloned windows partition are on drive letter C:.
You can not normally change drive letter for windows partition. It breaks windows.

So, when you clone windows partition and try to boot windows from it, it needs drive letter assigned.
If old drive with old windows partition is present, it has C: drive letter already reserved.
Cloned drive can't get drive letter C: anymore. It gets assigned a different drive letter. As a result - cloned windows gets broken and you have to reclone.

This is a bit simplified explanation. But you get the idea.