Help, Windows 10 Pro not able to create install partition.

fdegrove said:

Hi,



The more I reread this the more I think that Windows was installed with the old drive in the system and online.
Should that be the case then I think Windows rebooted from the old install and handed over the operating system to the new one.
Removing the old drive then results in Windows no longer be bootable as it never actually booted from the new drive anyway.
As an example I have an USB external drive that I made bootable so when I select to boot from it through the bios boot menu (F12) it does exactly that.

Does that sound plausible to any of you ?

Best,



Does that sound plausible to anyone?

I hope it is plausible, since that is what I wrote in post #2

Hi,

I hope it is plausible, since that is what I wrote in post #2

LOL. Don't know how I overlooked that. Great minds and all that, right ?.

In the mean time I had a go at a few of this Samsung drive's reviews and from what I can tell it should be bootable (GPT and MBR) for as long as the MB and bios support it. Of course they refer to a straight M2 connection, not the PCIe to M2 one although that too should work if the machine supports booting from PCIe of course.

Cheers,

No, when I did the clean install to the Samsung 950 Pro, I had removed my system drive totally from the system. I do have three other drives in this server but none of them had the operating system. Windows 10 Pro installed to the Samsung 950 Pro for sure and all my applications were installed. When I ran the Samsung Magician software it showed about 2550MB/sec read and 1540 MB/sec write and there is no rapid mode for the 950 Pro yet. After about three days of installing I was very happy.

I ran into the MBR problem when I went to format one of the old WD hard drives which did have a backup of the system drive using Paragon software. When that was done this system would no longer boot. I put my old system drive back into the server and booted with that drive. The adapter card is an Asus deluxe Z170 mini M.2 X4 adapter. I am not sure what caused my problem, the drive, the adapter or the Paragon software. I have my suspicion about Paragon because it did need some updates.

I can use Samsung Magician to restore this SSD back to the factory defaults this weekend and then I should be able to do another clean install. I am not looking forward to that so I will try to see if I can convert the cloned drive from GPT to MBR using the MiniTool Partition Wizard first.

Ak

Hi,

about 2550MB/sec read and 1540 MB/sec write and there is no rapid mode for the 950 Pro yet

Yeah.......M2 stands for Mach 2, right ?

That said I really hope you'll get this working as I'm also eyeballing that drive for one of my pcs.

Cheers,

I had it working great and I hope to get it working again soon. If I can't get it working I am looking at the ASRock Z97 Extreme/6 motherboard as a replacement for my Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard, at least it has an ultra M.2 slot. I would not have to replace my CPU or memory.

It will be Mach 3 when Samsung allows rapid mode for this SSD.

Ak

Hi,

If I can't get it working I am looking at the ASRock Z97 Extreme/6 motherboard as a replacement for my Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard, at least it has an ultra M.2 slot.

Looking at your benchmarks results I assumed you already had the drive in a PCIe Gen 3 slot ?
Naturally Asrock's solution would do away with the M2 to PCI adaptor which can't be a bad thing.

Cheers,

An M.2 PCIe drive needs the UEFI bios for the driver. So, install it as UEFI and things should be fine. I run an X99 in that configuration.

Otherwise, if you get the cannot install message, it may be one of two things. First, a Critical partition is already on the drive and the install cannot remove it. Secondly, if you need to convert a drive from GPT to MBR or MBR to GPT you need to remove all partitions on the drive.

I am sure this info has been mentioned in several of the prior posts, just wanted to confirm.

I always try to remove all extra drives to make sure there is no confusion as to where the boot files end up.

Hi,

An M.2 PCIe drive needs the UEFI bios for the driver.

IOW, it's more likely to work when the bios is set to UEFI and hence a GPT partition table. Thought as much.

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,



Looking at your benchmarks results I assumed you already had the drive in a PCIe Gen 3 slot ?
Naturally Asrock's solution would do away with the M2 to PCI adaptor which can't be a bad thing.

Cheers,

Yes that is where I had it, in my second PCIe Gen 3 X16 slot. The bios reported the device running Gen 3 X4.

Ak

fdegrove said:

Hi,



IOW, it's more likely to work when the bios is set to UEFI and hence a GPT partition table. Thought as much.

Cheers,

No and the installer media will not install Windows 10 Pro onto a GPT drive.

Ak