boot from USB to boot from NVMe?

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  1. Posts : 428
    Windows 10
       #1

    boot from USB to boot from NVMe?


    tl;dr: My 3rd gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon has a NVMe M.2 slot for a SSD and can read and write from it, but due to an exclusivity agreement with Samsung (who failed to honor it anyways) the BIOS refuses to boot from NVMe drives (on older firmware versions you could glitch the computer into booting but they patched that out). I have a 1TB NVMe SSD I would like to use in it. It seems a working solution is to install Clover (used to boot Hackintoshes) onto a USB drive then boot that and get it to boot the SSD, but for the life of me i can't get it to work - my attempts just give a screen where the top half is black and the bottom half is static. Is there an alternative bootloader i could use, or could I put the Windows bootloader on the USB drive?
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  3. Posts : 428
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Is there a way to clone the EFI partition from my boot drive to the USB drive then point it to the OS on the other drive?
    boot from USB to boot from NVMe?-image.png
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  4. Posts : 428
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #4

    I think I can do this. If I boot into the windows installer on a USB drive I can open command prompt and use it to clone the efi partition from the NVMe drive to the booting USB drive - which might work automatically as it will be a clean install and the efi partition will point to the bootloader on the ssd, but I might have to edit a single line to point at the correct drive. I'll try this when I get the chance to pull my system apart. I really don't want to deal with clover bullshit as I just haven't been able to make it work.
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  5. Posts : 4,511
    several
       #5

    the BIOS refuses to boot from NVMe drives

    If your bios does not have the oproms for nvme boot - you need to use clover.

    Or flash a modded bios, which as far as I know, isn't practical on oem mobos.
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  6. Posts : 6,245
    Windows 11 Pro - Windows 7 HP - Lubuntu
       #6

    Can't you clone the C: partition of your SATA drive to the NVMe drive and then add a option on the SATA drive EFI partition to point to the windows partition on NVMe drive?
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  7. Posts : 428
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #7

    Megahertz said:
    Can't you clone the C: partition of your SATA drive to the NVMe drive and then add a option on the SATA drive EFI partition to point to the windows partition on NVMe drive?
    the laptop only has room for one drive.
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  8. Posts : 4,594
    Windows 10 Pro
       #8

    Is the Samsung NVMe driver installed on the OS installer ?

    You say the laptop only has 1 slot for a SSD / M.2, so how do you know you can read and write from the M.2 ?
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  9. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #9

    I'm confused. If the laptop has only one slot for an SSD, but the BIOS won't let it boot from that drive.....then how is the computer supposed to boot at all?
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  10. Posts : 428
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #10

    AddRAM said:
    Is the Samsung NVMe driver installed on the OS installer ?

    You say the laptop only has 1 slot for a SSD / M.2, so how do you know you can read and write from the M.2 ?
    Because I booted from a USB installer while the NVMe ssd was installed. It saw the drive fine and installed normally, but failed to reboot. And it's an Intel ssd not a Samsung ssd. The firmware is locked so only a Samsung NVMe ssd that does not exists will boot, but sata based ssds work fine
    NavyLCDR said:
    I'm confused. If the laptop has only one slot for an SSD, but the BIOS won't let it boot from that drive.....then how is the computer supposed to boot at all?
    Older Sata M.2 ssds work fine, but NVMe m.2 ssds are artificially restricted.
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