Question WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe can't boot after installing Windows ?

[Omphaloskeptic]

Hey all, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong place here, not sure if my problem is with storage or the mobo so I'm asking around to whoever can help.

NVMe SSD: WD_BLACK SN770 2TB
Mobo: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ICE, BIOS version F31
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X

I started with using this drive as only storage on a different build with no issues. After upgrading most of the parts of the PC, it was still recognized as a drive and I can still use it for storage now. The problem is when I try to install an OS on it because my OS is currently installed on an older SSD. Here's the process I went through: clean the drive to unallocated space using diskpart in the command prompt, shut down, physically unplugged my other drives from the motherboard, boot from USB with Windows installation media, installed Windows 10 (and have tried 11).

Afterwards, the NVMe SSD isn't recognized as a boot drive until I enable CSM support, but once it's recognized and I try to boot I get this:
" reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key "

The drive appears to have Windows installed correctly and is in GPT format. The drive is installed in the M2A_CPU slot. After asking WD for help we determined that the drive is as 100% health and is probably not the problem if it can still be used for storage.

Please let me know what other information is required or how I can fix this problem.

Thank you for your help.

 

[evermorex76]

Is RAID mode disabled? You shouldn't have been able to install at all if it wasn't.

Try setting Storage Boot Option Control to UEFI Only while CSM support is enabled. It sounds like it's properly installing in UEFI-mode, because when you switch to CSM which looks for a BIOS-mode drive it fails, so you shouldn't need to enable CSM at all, so it's definitely odd.

Try to disable CSM, and make sure any other settings for Legacy or BIOS or CSM modes are disabled or grayed out as well. According to the BIOS guide, they shouldn't be available unless CSM is enabled

When you say it's not recognized as a boot drive, what do you mean? The BIOS doesn't show the drive exists? Or you just get an error that no boot drive is found? The error you get in CSM is because CSM doesn't recognize a GPT-formatted boot drive.

You could just go ahead and do the installation with CSM enabled. All that will happen is that the MBR format will be used and you'll be running in BIOS/Legacy mode instead of UEFI. That won't make much of a difference, nothing noticeable. The biggest limitation is you can't have a boot partition larger than 2TB so this drive (which has a 1.8TB real space) will be fine.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

Thanks for the response! I'll fiddle with it some more soon, but before that can I get some more clarification?

I don't know much about RAID. Is that a setting in BIOS pertaining to the NVMe drive prior to attempting OS installation?

Disabling CSM prior to installation affects how the Windows Installation Media works?

When I say it's not recognized as a boot drive, yeah, BIOS doesn't list it as an option and the PC goes straight back to BIOS when restarted.

Hm, so the problem is the drive is formatted in GPT but GPT format isn't recognized in CSM enabled?

 

[evermorex76]

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_amd600series-bios_e_0104.pdf

That's the BIOS guide and will tell you where each setting is located. If RAID functionality is enabled, you usually have to use a USB drive with the drivers on it and manually load them during Windows setup.

The motherboard has the CSM enable/disable setting, and then further options that are only available if CSM is enabled. One of those is UEFI Only or BIOS Only. I'm not entirely sure what that does, because you can't boot from a GPT drive when in BIOS mode, or MBR when in UEFI mode. Maybe it's a method to "interpret" the drive in a way that will allow it to boot when in the "wrong" mode, so if you set it to UEFI-Only right now, it will make your drive bootable. It's just odd that it becomes completely invisible in the setup which should be unrelated to how it's formatted.

If CSM is enabled, Windows will install in "BIOS mode", which creates an MBR drive instead of GPT. MBR has some limitations like 2TB (binary) physical disk size, and other functionality is less than UEFI, but performance is the same on consumer systems. If CSM is disabled, Windows creates a GPT drive which technically has a 75.6 zetabyte drive size limit but is implemented such that the limit is "only" 18 exabytes. BIOS can ONLY work with MBR as the boot drive, and UEFI can ONLY work with GPT. (BIOS/Legacy systems can read a GPT data-only disk as long as the operating system supports it.)

 

[SkyNetRising]

Here's the process I went through:

clean the drive to unallocated space using diskpart in the command prompt,​

shut down,​

physically unplugged my other drives from the motherboard,​

boot from USB with Windows installation media, installed Windows 10 (and have tried 11).​

Afterwards, the NVMe SSD isn't recognized as a boot drive until I enable CSM support,
but once it's recognized and I try to boot I get this: " reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key "
The drive appears to have Windows installed correctly and is in GPT format.

In UEFI mode valid boot option is named "Windows Boot Manager". In some BIOS versions it can be also named "UEFI:Hard drive"
Boot option named <HDD/SSD model name> is for legacy boot.
If windows has been installed in UEFI mode, then legacy boot option is not functional (you can not boot from it).
If you try to boot in legacy mode from OS installed in UEFI mode, you get error message you mentioned above "reboot and select proper boot device".

Some BIOS settings you have to pay attention to:

Sata Controller mode - set to AHCI,​

Fast Boot - disabled,​

Secure boot - disabled​

NVME raid - disabled.​

​

If possible, show screenshot from Disk Management.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

 

[evermorex76]

Secure Boot should be enabled with Windows 7 and higher (although disabling it does nothing more than disable the slight security that it provides to ensure that you're booting a valid Windows install). Fast Boot normally can be enabled. SATA controller mode is irrelevant with this drive since it's NVMe.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Secure Boot should be enabled with Windows 7 and higher.
Fast Boot normally can be enabled.
SATA controller mode is irrelevant with this drive since it's NVMe.

Having Secure boot enabled can cause boot problems. Should be avoided, if possible.
Having fast boot enabled can cause partition table/file system corruption, if you're adding/removing storage devices.
Sata controller mode may have options to cause NVME drive treated as cache drive for sata drive. This is relevant to NVME drives.

 

[evermorex76]

Secure Boot only causes problems if you're booting something that doesn't have a proper secure boot code. Fast Boot doesn't corrupt anything, but might prevent detection of new devices, which can be resolved by simply doing a hard power cycle. The NVMe drive would have never shown up in the first place if SATA options are relevant, and they only appear on Intel boards that support Optane.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

Hi, I'm back. I think I have a better idea of what the problem is, but don't know why it's a problem or how to solve it. The problem is that previously fiddling with settings get the NVMe drive to display in the boot order, but NOT Windows Boot Manager on the NVME drive, which I know now is what I wanted to see and select. Settings were AHCI selected, RAID mode disabled, CSM Support disabled, Secure Boot enabled (tried it as disabled and I think Windows 11 didn't like that), Fast Boot disabled, Windows 11 being installed.

So I watched a video of someone else installing windows and the difference came after the first automatic restart of the installation process. In the video the installation process continued, but for me it either boots back into BIOS or the Windows Installation Media depending if I take the flash drive out during the restart. Even if I hit DEL to enter BIOS during that restart, I've realized that the problem is that even though I can see the installation media has partitioned the drive and copied a whole bunch of stuff over, there's no Windows Boot Manager being detected by the system so the installation process can never finalize after the first restart. I tried to disable the flash drive from the boot order and simply force boot it once to initialize installation, but that didn't continue the process whether I tried to enter BIOS or let it continue on its own, no boot manager listed. Tried it with CSM Support enabled, no boot manager. Tried a few combinations of CSM Support on or off, then switching after the first reboot, but no boot manager.

The question now is why Windows Boot Manager isn't being created or detected properly and if there are other settings that need to be adjusted to achieve that.

 

[evermorex76]

Do you have any other drives in the computer or on USB? Oh it looks like you do. Remove that drive during the install. The installer is seeing that you have an existing OS with the Boot Manager stuff already on it so it doesn't add it to the new drive.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

Do you have any other drives in the computer or on USB? Oh it looks like you do. Remove that drive during the install. The installer is seeing that you have an existing OS with the Boot Manager stuff already on it so it doesn't add it to the new drive.

I have a SSD and a HDD that I physically unplugged prior to installation. The USB stick with Windows Installation Media I've tried removing during the restart and removing after entering BIOS during the first restart of installation and neither way worked, it just goes right back into BIOS because there's no Boot Manager found afterwards.

 

[evermorex76]

I'm at a loss without hands-on. Unless you have a network KVM you want to give me access to, I can't figure out why it wouldn't be working. It might be that for some reason the BCD is looking for a separate EFI system partition, but the installer is putting the EFI partition data in the C drive (which is a valid but not preferred setup), or vice versa.

But maybe you can just fix it manually. Use the installer stick to get to the command line repair mode, and use the commands like bcdboot, bootrec, bcdedit, etc. to ensure there is an EFI system partition and an EFI folder on the C drive, and that the BCD is pointing to the right path. (bcdedit will show you the path it's looking for right now, which should likely be "partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2". There are guides to using the commands.

You can use diskpart to view the partitions, which should show the first partition being about 128MB and the EFI system partition (diskpart won't show the 16MB MSR partition, but the BCD knows it's there which is why it shows Volume2). Make sure diskpart does indicate that it's GPT, and that it's the only disk connected.

After that disable every legacy option you can find in BIOS and see what happens.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

When I open the western digital application and select my drive, for some reason it's listed as WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD [RAID] with the capacity and interface speed not shown as seen in the link. Would it be possible that it REQUIRES NVMe RAID to be enabled? Would trying to turn it on be any detriment to the system? Is there a way to un-raid-ify it? I don't see anything in the literature about why it would be seen as raid in the first place.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

When I open the western digital application and select my drive, for some reason it's listed as WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD [RAID] with the capacity and interface speed not shown as seen in the link. Would it be possible that it REQUIRES NVMe RAID to be enabled? Would trying to turn it on be any detriment to the system? Is there a way to un-raid-ify it? I don't see anything in the literature about why it would be seen as raid in the first place.

Its in raid mode or the controller is a raid controller and you need to select it as JOD. But this is a mode your motherboard is in.

I'm getting called to dinner, so in the meantime, look at how to get your UEFI disk going. I'll look in the manual at what setting it suppose to be but in the meantime, others should be able to chime in and explain how to get a UEFI disk to boot on this motherboard. You probably have to clear the secure boot and set it to install,

 

[evermorex76]

You would need to disable RAID mode in the BIOS, which you've somehow managed to overlook, however this may make the drive unbootable. RAID mode abstracts the drive from the OS, which is why Dashboard shows no data. If you change the setting, you'll have to reinstall the OS. Get the manual for the board and look for all BIOS information about RAID settings.

There is no performance detriment to having it in RAID mode, but you might not be able to do things like firmware updates or monitoring SMART (though SMART might be passed through; it depends on the controller).

Perhaps this is what the problem has been all this time. Maybe you won't need to reinstall. If you disable RAID mode, nothing will be hurt. You can try it and see if the drive will boot or is still readable as storage. If needed, you can just turn RAID back on. As I said before, you shouldn't have even been able to install the OS with RAID enabled without installing RAID drivers. But maybe the problem is simply that it WAS installed in RAID mode, but when you try to boot, RAID mode is being disabled. Maybe you actually need to ENABLE RAID mode to make it bootable.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

You would need to disable RAID mode in the BIOS, which you've somehow managed to overlook, however this may make the drive unbootable. RAID mode abstracts the drive from the OS, which is why Dashboard shows no data. If you change the setting, you'll have to reinstall the OS. Get the manual for the board and look for all BIOS information about RAID settings.

There is no performance detriment to having it in RAID mode, but you might not be able to do things like firmware updates or monitoring SMART (though SMART might be passed through; it depends on the controller).

Perhaps this is what the problem has been all this time. Maybe you won't need to reinstall. If you disable RAID mode, nothing will be hurt. You can try it and see if the drive will boot or is still readable as storage. If needed, you can just turn RAID back on. As I said before, you shouldn't have even been able to install the OS with RAID enabled without installing RAID drivers. But maybe the problem is simply that it WAS installed in RAID mode, but when you try to boot, RAID mode is being disabled. Maybe you actually need to ENABLE RAID mode to make it bootable.

That's why it's strange. Here are my settings. As far as I can tell, RAID mode is and has been disabled this whole time. So why is the drive showing RAID mode. When I was chatting with WD support about it, they convinced me that it didn't matter whether it showed the drive was a RAID device or not. I'll chat with them more tomorrow during business hours.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

Perhaps this is what the problem has been all this time. Maybe you won't need to reinstall. If you disable RAID mode, nothing will be hurt.

the message :
" reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key "

comes from the uefi partition (which is properly formatted) not being able to find the boot pointer. Which in this case because its put into a new machine and the media translation is not correct.

 

[evermorex76]

That's why it's strange. Here are my settings. As far as I can tell, RAID mode is and has been disabled this whole time. So why is the drive showing RAID mode. When I was chatting with WD support about it, they convinced me that it didn't matter whether it showed the drive was a RAID device or not. I'll chat with them more tomorrow during business hours.

It's absolutely important and shouldn't show that if you aren't using RAID. I've never heard of a drive itself being in "RAID mode" because that depends on the OS or RAID controller. I doubt you're going to get anywhere with their support. Maybe the drive is just bad.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Here are my settings. As far as I can tell, RAID mode is and has been disabled this whole time.

Can you show a screenshot from Disk Management?

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

turn off fast boot if its on, must remain off until this drive boots correctly, then turn it on.
make sure CSM support is off, then you need to clear secure boot.

if that doesn't work, then you have to try different CSM settings. But I doubt it.

If you change hard drives with an active os, you have to clear secure boot and reset the tpm keys. On my test machine, it wont boot any drive but the drive that secure boot was enabled on and gives the same boot error message.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

Can you show a screenshot from Disk Management?

I should mention that I'm using the drive as storage between installation attempts, if you want to see the drive after an installation attempt I can provide that the next time I try.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I should mention that I'm using the drive as storage between installation attempts,
if you want to see the drive after an installation attempt I can provide that the next time I try.

2TB drive is not bootable.
It has to be cleaned (no partitions , no data) , before you can install windows on it.

 

[Omphaloskeptic]

2TB drive is not bootable.
It has to be cleaned (no partitions , no data) , before you can install windows on it.

I'm aware, this is just the drive in its current state. I'll take another screenshot the next time I try the installation.

 

[evermorex76]

turn off fast boot if its on, must remain off until this drive boots correctly, then turn it on.
make sure CSM support is off, then you need to clear secure boot.

if that doesn't work, then you have to try different CSM settings. But I doubt it.

If you change hard drives with an active os, you have to clear secure boot and reset the tpm keys. On my test machine, it wont boot any drive but the drive that secure boot was enabled on and gives the same boot error message.

I've never had to do either of those, and no cloning software will work without decrypting a drive unless it warns you and only runs in bit-for-bit mode, and the TPM is perfectly capable of storing multiple keys so you could swap hard drives back and forth.

 

[evermorex76]

I'm aware, this is just the drive in its current state. I'll take another screenshot the next time I try the installation.

Why would you be changing it back and forth?

Did you try turning RAID mode on in the BIOS, with only that drive installed in the primary slot?