960 Evo Boot Drive Compatibility Question

webajs

Prominent
Dec 3, 2017
3
0
520
Hey everyone,
I'm looking to replace my current boot HDD with an M.2 and I'm looking for some advice.

My MOBO is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H.
I purchased a:
"Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E250BW)"
"SilverStone Technology Dual M2 to PCI-E X4 and SATA 6G Adapter Card (ECM20)"

I assumed that the adapter's controller would be able to do all the work, but there is a lot of data out there on M.2 and its hard to sift through. I have read that some MOBO chipsets do not handle NVME, but I think this has been people referring to on board connectors for the M.2s. Another thing I have read is that some will not accept NVME as boot drives "just because", no better reason.

Would anyone be able to help me out with steering me in the right direction for some info on this or letting me know what I need to look at to make sure this installation works correctly?

Thank you.
 
Solution
I figured out my own answer. NVME does not appear to be supported as a bootable drive on Intel chipsets older than the 9x series. There are workarounds. The one I decided on was to make a USB that took priority in my boot order. It provides drivers for NVME cards for the BIOS UFEI. The other option is to provide definitions on the UFEI, but there's risk involved. I used two articles from another forum that detailed both options and chose which one seemed like it would work best for me. I'm not sure if its kosher to share outside links, but I'm hoping they might help someone in my situation.

What I used. Easier, but you will have to boot first by a permanent USB...

webajs

Prominent
Dec 3, 2017
3
0
520
I figured out my own answer. NVME does not appear to be supported as a bootable drive on Intel chipsets older than the 9x series. There are workarounds. The one I decided on was to make a USB that took priority in my boot order. It provides drivers for NVME cards for the BIOS UFEI. The other option is to provide definitions on the UFEI, but there's risk involved. I used two articles from another forum that detailed both options and chose which one seemed like it would work best for me. I'm not sure if its kosher to share outside links, but I'm hoping they might help someone in my situation.

What I used. Easier, but you will have to boot first by a permanent USB:
https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f46-Guide-NVMe-boot-without-modding-your-UEFI-BIOS-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

Option 2. Careful not to brick your MOBO:
https://www.win-raid.com/t871f16-Guide-How-to-get-full-NVMe-support-for-all-Systems-with-an-AMI-UEFI-BIOS.html#msg14810
 
Solution