Adding a second M.2 SSD for bootup

Benji10 said:

Hi all,

(please be gentle, im quite green with this :)

I currently have a 500gb SSD Gen4 that is in the M2_1 socket on the motherboard that i would like to swap out for a larger SSD.
Ideally id like to move the smaller 500gb SSD down to M2_2 (which only supports Gen3) and have that as the bootup and the larger SSD Gen4 in M2_1 for storage etc?

is that possible to have the bootup from the M2_2 socket?

my motherboard is a ASUS B550 Gaming Edge wifi


Many thanks
Ben

Might want to edit your post to say MSI B550 Gaming Edge wifi


You should be able to boot from the M.2_2 slot, but I've never used an M.2 SSD, so I'm not positive.
The easiest way to find out, is just move the 500Gb SSD to the M.2_2 slot and see if the computer boots.

I see nothing in your manual, that says, you can't boot from the M.2_2 slot.

Benji10 said:

Thats odd i dont know why i put ASUS instead of MSI, i must have got distracted at that point....

I did have a nose through the manual and couldnt see anything regarding the bootup location. i just thought i was missing something.
I take it i will have to go into the BIOS and direct it to the new bootup M.2_2 location?

It should automatically "find" the bootable M.2 SSD, but if it doesn't, just go to Settings > Boot sub-menu ...in the BIOS.

Then, assuming you get it to boot from the 500GB SSD in the M.2_2 slot... you can then put the new SSD in the M.2_1 slot and see if the comp still boots from the 500GB SSD.

Benji10 said:

Well i cant ask for a better answer than that thank you very much.
i shall give it a go when im home from work and hopfully report back with good news.

A lot of the time, in this new age of crumby motherboard manuals... trial and error works pretty good.

You wanna put your boot drive in the fastest slot, if in fact it is a faster speed PCI-E slot.
Just because you have a Gen 4 M.2 doesn`t mean it`s running at gen 4 speeds unless your board and cpu support PCI-Express 4.0
Put your storage drive in the M.2 2 slot.

Fill in your specs.