PCIe M.2 SSD not showing in bios

sea skimmer · 28 Mar 2019

I bought a Samsung 970 EVO nvme m.2 1TB SSD that i connected to a PCIe adapter and then plugged into the pcie slot. by following a tutorial on you tube i got windows 10 installed on the SSD but the SSD does not show up in bios so i can't boot from it. When i plug my old SSD in and boot from that i can see the PCIe SSD in windows but when i reboot it still isn't showing in bios.
I also followed the below tutorial but still no joy.

Go into the bios, under the boot tab there is an option for CSM, make sure it is disabled.

Click on secure boot option below and make sure it is set to other OS, not windows UEFI.

Click on key management and clear secure boot keys.

Insert a USB memory stick with a bootable UEFI USB drive with Windows 10 Setup* on it, USB3 is quicker but USB2 works also. A Windows DVD won’t work unless you’ve created your own UEFI Bootable DVD.

Press F10 to save, exit and reboot.

Windows 10 will now start installing to your NVME drive as it has its own NVME driver built in.

When the PC reboots hit F2 to go back into the BIOS, you will see under boot priority that windows boot manager now lists your NVME drive.

Click on secure boot again but now set it to WIndows UEFI mode.

Click on key management and install default secure boot keys

Press F10 to save and exit and windows will finish the install. Once you have Windows up and running, shutdown the PC and reconnect your other SATA drives.

any help would be great.

ignatzatsonic · 28 Mar 2019

What motherboard?

Do you know for a FACT that your motherboard supports booting from an NVMe SSD?

I bought an Intel 660p NVMe SSD two weeks ago.

I use it for data only, but as a test I installed Windows on it to see if I could boot with it. It worked fine as a boot disk. The motherboard's specs (Asrock Z170M Extreme 4) state that it does in fact support booting from NVMe SSDs.

I also use a PCIe adapter card on which I mounted the 660p.

My first guess is that your board doesn't support NVMe booting.

If you have an Asus board with an i5-3470 in it, that may be old enough that it won't support NVMe booting.

Does that board have a native NVMe port? I'm guessing no and that's why you are trying a PCIe adapter?

Cliff S · 28 Mar 2019

The thing is BIOS is only "seeing" actually showing the SATA drives.

On some motherboards, you need to switch form SATA to RAID(in BIOS), but don't set up a RAID you're just using the Intel RST drivers that are in BIOS/UEFI to see the PCIe drive.

After you have Windows installed on the disk, you can then switch back to SATA, then inside of Windows install your Samsung NVMe driver:https://www.samsung.com/semiconducto...ownload/tools/ Scroll down to Driver

Cliff S · 28 Mar 2019

PolarNettles · 28 Mar 2019

OP hasn't said what motherboard they have but assuming they're using the i5-3470 in their profile, that would likely date it pre-NVMe. So it would not have native support for booting from an NVMe drive without modding the BIOS, which may be possible depending on the model.

The 970 does not appear to have a legacy option ROM either but I can't find anything definitive on that.

scopio · 28 Mar 2019

Using NVMe or NAND or VNAND SSDs on older motherboards that do not support SSDs other than from a PCIe adaptor may not necessarily show up correctly in the BIOS. (Note that this is not a EUFI motherboard!)
Talking from my own experience, I have a ten year old ASUS M4A79T Deluxe (AM3) motherboard, which I have to say has and is still serving me well, I decided to add two Samsung EVO 860 SSDs with a PCIe card, one on which I installed Windows 10 Home 64bit and the other to store my software, I have two other HDDs to store my personal data and two Optical drives.
I can boot Windows from the SSD without any issues and all is working fine. When it comes to showing in the BIOS is when it becomes confusing. The Storage Configuration is set to AHCI, in BOOT HDDs the SSDs are shown as IDE.
In BOOT priority 1^st BOOT I had to set it to BOOT from Removable Device to be able to BOOT from the SSD and as they are connected through a PCIe adaptor card they appear as removable devices in the Hidden Icons.

PCIe M.2 SSD not showing in bios-2019-03-28_16-00-30.jpg

As I said earlier I can BOOT from the SSD and all works fine.I am only posting this in case this may be relevant as far as installing SSDs through a PCIe adaptor card and is why the OP cannot see it in the BIOS.

AcyMiro · 19 Jun 2019

Cliff S said:

PCIe M.2 SSD not showing in bios-image.png

I have recently bought a "Scorch M.2 PCIe Solid State Drive 256GB" and i have tried this method, but still my BIOS can't recognize my ssd. Hopefully you could also help me on this matter.

Cliff S · 19 Jun 2019

@AcyMiro if it doesn't show under disks in UEFI, how about under the boot menu options?

AcyMiro · 19 Jun 2019

Cliff S said:

@AcyMiro if it doesn't show under disks in UEFI, how about under the boot menu options?

It didn't also appear there, only my bootable usb drive appears and when i try to install the OS, no driver can be reconized.

Cliff S · 19 Jun 2019

Is this disk the same size as the one you are replacing it with?
If yes, do you perhaps, have a Macrium reflect system image of it?

If you prefer, need to do a clean install, make sure all other disks are disconnected(just the data cables are enough) and only have the M.2 connected and select Custom Install.