M2 Boot on Legacy Bios Motherboard

[wasbit]

I have been attempting to boot from an M2 drive mounted in a PCIe adapter on an ancient Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H motherboard. The PCIe is version 2. The M2 drive can be seen, written to & read but won’t boot.

 

Some say that booting is only possible with UEFI whilst others say it is possible using a legacy bios & an intermediary boot loader eg Clover or Duet.

 

Any insights?

 

Clover Bootloader
– https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f50-Guide-NVMe-boot-w-o-BIOS-modding-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

DUET – Developer’s UEFI Environment
Duet + rEFInd (direct download)
– https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1ogEdBzKrLRkz0SRwLphpFemRLWmgayA-

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[keith with the teef]

A up wasbit.

Thats a bit cryptic.

What OS are you trying to boot into and did you install the OS on the M2 via that mobo.

[Ed P]

tbh I do not know the answer for legacy mobos, but I do remember having to be extra careful in my mobo settings on an ASUS Strix board. I assume you checked page 16 of your Gigabyte manual as that seems to be just as picky.

However, I probably made my own life hard in that at the time it was much cheaper to buy two half-size M2’s rather than one full size, so I set up my Windows boot drive to use storage spaces, and pfaffed around using a bootable usb stick to get Windows installed. I’m sorry but I now cannot remember the details other than it being a bit of a PITA.

[wasbit]

keith with the teef wrote:

What OS are you trying to boot into and did you install the OS on the M2 via that mobo.

Windows 8.1 refused to install directly to the M2. Think it said because the drive wasn’t bootable.

Windows 8.1 installed on M2 by cloning main drive but not bootable.

 

Ed P wrote:

tbh I assume you checked page 16 of your Gigabyte manual as that seems to be just as picky..

Page 10 in my manual says,

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) (Note 5)
(The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
(Note 5) For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install
it in the PCIEX16 slot.

Tried both slots but no joy.

 

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[keith with the teef]

with an old mobo like that and w8,1.

I would have thought that uefi would even come into it.

have a look in the bios and see if you have uefi enabled if so for another option from the drop down?

Thats really confusing that the m2 is not bootable. I have not come across that before.

[keith with the teef]

I remember early w10 and my bios was not fully uefi compatible and so at that time I had to use legacy.

But 2021 bios is full uefi and so w11 compatible and thats what I use now.

[wasbit]

The M2 drive mounted in a PCIe adaptor would probably boot if the motherboard was UEFI but it’s not.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[johnbarry]

Ricedg once said to me (god knows the reason) you must first install on the M.2 or it won’t boot. So I think that’s saying yours won’t boot as it was not first setup on the M.2

Cheers
John

[Dave Rice]

There’s an Intel SSD PCIe NVMe Boot Installation Guide here. Basically it has to be UEFI and the Mobo OEM has to have implemented the requisite features, none of which will be on by default. There will be much tinkering with CSM settings, which always caused me grief. I’ve given up using new hardware on old hardware that wasn’t really designed for it.

You may be right John, I forget as it’s ages since I cloned a SATA drive to an NVMe. In fact it’s increasingly rare I touch SATA drives in PCs or Laptops these days.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Apparently some Samsung M2 drives include an old style option ROM that makes them bootable on a traditional BIOS system, much like SCSI adapters did.

Failing that, it should be possible to have your system partition on a bootable SATA drive but your Windows partition on the M2 drive.

[wasbit]

Dave Rice wrote:

There’s an Intel SSD PCIe NVMe Boot Installation Guide here. .

Thanks Dave. That’s one I hadn’t come across.

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Apparently some Samsung M2 drives include an old style option ROM that makes them bootable on a traditional BIOS system, much like SCSI adapters did. Failing that, it should be possible to have your system partition on a bootable SATA drive but your Windows partition on the M2 drive.

Yes, but finding one at a reasonable price is the problem.

Apparently the 950 Pro is the one to go for. I’m awaiting the arrival of a 960 Pro which hopefully will also be suitable.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Ed P]

Provided that you disconnect all other drives, I cannot see why a simple SSD install from USB would not work. Maybe the procedure given here, with or without the UEFI option might work.

I think that disconnecting all other drives may be the important step.

 

[Dave Rice]

Ed, I believe it’s down to chipset and motherboard support as well as drivers (which are especially important for installation media). I seriously doubt the M2 pcie drive would be seen at all.

In a reverse scenario, I have put an M2 WD Green SATA into the second slot of my Thinkbook, It’s not detected at all. Turns out the M2 slots are NVMe only. I suspect that the only way I could boot from a SATA device of any format is via USB adapter, but I’ve not tested that. I do know a Thinkbook will boot from a USB thumb drive though. Would it boot with a Thunderbolt device? Not a clue.

You may be right, but I suspect it’ll be a leap too far.

[wasbit]

Can I just reiterate that the current M2 drive mounted in a PCIe adaptor can be seen, read & written to. The current Windows 8.1 was cloned to the M2 drive but it remains unbootable.

--
Regards
wasbit

Rig 1: Optiplex 3050 SFF
Rig 2: Asus ROG G20CB (rebuilt wreck)
Rig 3: HP Elitebook 8440P

Dear Starfleet, hate you, hate the Federation, taking Voyager. - Janeway

[Ed P]

I think your ‘cloning’ step may be the problem.  Installing from a USB drive accomplishes two things, it puts the necessary boot sectors on the M2 and identifies the M2 as the boot device.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

The problem is that an old style BIOS will only look for bootable devices that are attached to its built in SATA or USB ports, it will also scan for option ROM’s on cards plugged into PCI/PCIe slots and run them.

If your adapter or M2 drive have a boot ROM then you’re good to go, if not, then they just won’t show up as a boot option.

[Ed P]

i grant that is an issue.  However, according to this article the real kicker is that the mobo must be UEFI compatible to use as a boot device.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

A classic BIOS won’t have an NVMe driver, no.

If you get one of those Samsung 980 Pro drives with an option rom though it WILL have one. Windows 8.0 and up also has its own NVMe driver, so once the system is booted it doesn’t matter what drivers the BIOS has.

IF the Windows installer can see the NVMe drive then you could get around the BIOS driver problem by just reinstalling Windows on the NVMe drive. The installer will leave the system partition on your existing SSD and create a duel boot setup. You can then boot into your new Windows installation on the NVMe drive and delete the original Windows partition on the SSD.

You now boot from the SSD but run Windows from the NVMe 😃

[Dave Rice]

The issue seems to be getting it to be the boot device and AFAIK that’s a BIOS issue. I have seen the boot from 1 drive and run from another before on a PC I worked on. That may be a possibility. Or how about spending the money on a motherboard (& CPU) that can actually do it natively?

[Author]

Posts