M.2 issues- need help

[Head of Vegetables]

I purchased a 1tb WD Blue m.2 nvme ssd yesterday, Installed it correctly and went ahead and installed windows on it via a usb flash drive. I can get my system to boot from the ssd: after my bios screen shows up, it asks which I want to boot from, oneis my new ssd and the other is my old HDD that still has windows on it.

First, I want to get rid of that, but that is a minor issue.

The biggest issue is that in my bios, I'm unable to locate the m.2 anywhere, and can't set it as the boot drive only in bios. Furthermore, re-configuring and moving apps/launchers to the ssd is a pain and at this point, it seems much easier to just wipe the new ssd and then clone my hdd to it so then everything is back to normal and working how it was without having to tinker with every little thing. I am probably going to do this and should be able to follow how to do it w WD's cloning software.

Anyway, I really need the ssd to show up in bios as being bootable before I clone my old drive and wipe that one. I have been searching and can't find an answer.

Here is my system:
MSI b350m bazooka motherboard
Radeon Rx 580 4gb
WD blue 1tb HDD (has windows installed)
WD elements 6tb external HDD (no windows, just storage)
WD blue 1tb m.2 nvme ssd (has windows but going to wipe and clone to it instead)
16gb ddr4 ram
ryzen 5 1400 @3.2GHz

Any help greatly appreciated

[Magma Dragoon]

Switch from legacy BIOS to UEFI

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

Switch from legacy BIOS to UEFI

it s already in UEFI

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

Switch from legacy BIOS to UEFI

it s already in UEFI

How did you format the boot sector? I believe it needs to be GPT to boot from EFI.

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

it s already in UEFI

How did you format the boot sector? I believe it needs to be GPT to boot from EFI.

it is formatted to GPT. Could it simply be incompatible with my motherboard? and if so, is there a work around? It is recognized in windows fine but not in bios anywhere, which is why I'm now concerned about motherboard compatibility.

[emoticorpse]

Why do you need to boot off the m.2 right now if it's about to be wiped? Just boot of whatever you are going to use to clone and then clone what you want to the m.2 and THEN try booting off the m.2. Worst comes to worst just unplug the hdd and see if it. Don't bother wiping it. The clone should do that for you.

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Why do you need to boot off the m.2 right now if it's about to be wiped? Just boot of whatever you are going to use to clone and then clone what you want to the m.2 and THEN try booting off the m.2. Worst comes to worst just unplug the hdd and see if it. Don't bother wiping it. The clone should do that for you.

I only want to ensure that in the bios there will be an option to set my M.2 as the boot drive. I'm worried that if I clone to the M.2 (wiping m.2 in the process) an option for setting it as boot in bios will not be present and then I won't be able to boot from it. In which case, if I then wipe windows from the HDD and the m.2 is unable to be booted from, I won't have a way to boot

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Why do you need to boot off the m.2 right now if it's about to be wiped? Just boot of whatever you are going to use to clone and then clone what you want to the m.2 and THEN try booting off the m.2. Worst comes to worst just unplug the hdd and see if it. Don't bother wiping it. The clone should do that for you.

I only want to ensure that in the bios there will be an option to set my M.2 as the boot drive. I'm worried that if I clone to the M.2 (wiping m.2 in the process) an option for setting it as boot in bios will not be present and then I won't be able to boot from it. In which case, if I then wipe windows from the HDD and the m.2 is unable to be booted from, I won't have a way to boot

Don't wipe the HDD. Just clone it and go from there. I see what you're saying, but hunting for the boot option in bios might be a waste of time if it boots fine WITHOUT having to fiddle with bios and boot options for the m.2. If your bios is asking you which one you want to boot off of then it's pretty obvious it's a boot option. Can you post a pic of the boot options in your bios?

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

I only want to ensure that in the bios there will be an option to set my M.2 as the boot drive. I'm worried that if I clone to the M.2 (wiping m.2 in the process) an option for setting it as boot in bios will not be present and then I won't be able to boot from it. In which case, if I then wipe windows from the HDD and the m.2 is unable to be booted from, I won't have a way to boot

Don't wipe the HDD. Just clone it and go from there. I see what you're saying, but hunting for the boot option in bios might be a waste of time if it boots fine WITHOUT having to fiddle with bios and boot options for the m.2. If your bios is asking you which one you want to boot off of then it's pretty obvious it's a boot option. Can you post a pic of the boot options in your bios?

It boots fine but only when the current HDD is set as an option, then once bios is exited, a windows screen pops up asking which I want to boot. It does it at every boot. When I try to disable the HDD from boot in the bios, it restarts and sends me back into bios and I can't get past there without setting it back to enabled.
The bios it self doesn't ask which one I want to boot off of, its like after exiting bios, windows basically asks me what I want to boot from. It says something along the lines of "choose an Operating system" and presents me with 2 options "windows 10 on volume 2", which happens to be the nvme, and "windows 10 on volume 6" which is the HDD, no clue what the volume 6 is all about though.

I can absolutely post a pic of my bios though I am unsure how to post a pic into a discussion like this so I'll try to post on imgur or something and paste the link

[Magma Dragoon]

I recall I had two different settings to get UEFI for real. Something like Mode: Legacy BIOS/EFI and Legacy Compatibility: enabled/disabled. You might also need to configure the slot to run in NVMe/PCIe mode.

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

I recall I had two different settings to get UEFI for real. Something like Mode: Legacy BIOS/EFI and Legacy Compatibility: enabled/disabled. You might also need to configure the slot to run in NVMe/PCIe mode.

I also had 2 settings. I believe they were similar to the ones you mentioned.
How would I go about configuring the slot to run in NVME mode?

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

I recall I had two different settings to get UEFI for real. Something like Mode: Legacy BIOS/EFI and Legacy Compatibility: enabled/disabled. You might also need to configure the slot to run in NVMe/PCIe mode.

I also had 2 settings. I believe they were similar to the ones you mentioned.
How would I go about configuring the slot to run in NVME mode?

I'm looking at videos of your motherboard and on the main screen of the bios it shows a row of icons of drives. YOu've seen that? and they say you can just drag to the order you want. Just want to make sure you've realized that and it wasn't something very simple you were goofing up. The M.2 doesn't show up in that list?

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

I also had 2 settings. I believe they were similar to the ones you mentioned.
How would I go about configuring the slot to run in NVME mode?

I'm looking at videos of your motherboard and on the main screen of the bios it shows a row of icons of drives. YOu've seen that? and they say you can just drag to the order you want. Just want to make sure you've realized that and it wasn't something very simple you were goofing up. The M.2 doesn't show up in that list?

Yes, I do see that and no unfortunately the M.2 doesn't show up.
Regardless, here is a link to the photos, lmk if the link works for you. Also, all the boot settings right now, are default, aside from switching to UEFI. Though, I think if I switch it to Legacy+UEFI, more settings appear and perhaps my m.2 is located there. I just haven't messed with it because I don't know what some of the settings mean.

https://imgur.com/a/PTKSW27

[Magma Dragoon]

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Originally posted by Magma Dragoon:

I recall I had two different settings to get UEFI for real. Something like Mode: Legacy BIOS/EFI and Legacy Compatibility: enabled/disabled. You might also need to configure the slot to run in NVMe/PCIe mode.

I also had 2 settings. I believe they were similar to the ones you mentioned.
How would I go about configuring the slot to run in NVME mode?

Not sure, I don't recall if I needed to do this on my x570 TUF. There is something called AMI native NVMe driver, which I have set to enabled.

I remember I did have trouble with multiple boot devices and eventually I pulled out all the other drives, install Windows on the NVMe, and messed with settings until it showed in the boot menu.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

I'm looking at videos of your motherboard and on the main screen of the bios it shows a row of icons of drives. YOu've seen that? and they say you can just drag to the order you want. Just want to make sure you've realized that and it wasn't something very simple you were goofing up. The M.2 doesn't show up in that list?

Yes, I do see that and no unfortunately the M.2 doesn't show up.
Regardless, here is a link to the photos, lmk if the link works for you. Also, all the boot settings right now, are default, aside from switching to UEFI. Though, I think if I switch it to Legacy+UEFI, more settings appear and perhaps my m.2 is located there. I just haven't messed with it because I don't know what some of the settings mean.

https://imgur.com/a/PTKSW27

You absolutely sure it's formatted as gpt? How do you know? What other options are in the Hard Disk...BBS Priorities settings?

I have a feeling all this is because of how the m.2 has windows installed. I think when you installed while the HDD with Windows was on it caused the m.2 to be kind of dependent on that drive booting and the bios might realize this and ignore it. Totally a hypothesis though, but I would still clone or re-install Windows without the HDD connected and see if the situation changes any.

[Head of Vegetables]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by GHOSTzombieX:

Yes, I do see that and no unfortunately the M.2 doesn't show up.
Regardless, here is a link to the photos, lmk if the link works for you. Also, all the boot settings right now, are default, aside from switching to UEFI. Though, I think if I switch it to Legacy+UEFI, more settings appear and perhaps my m.2 is located there. I just haven't messed with it because I don't know what some of the settings mean.

https://imgur.com/a/PTKSW27

You absolutely sure it's formatted as gpt? How do you know? What other options are in the Hard Disk...BBS Priorities settings?

Yes I am sure it is formatted to GPT because upon initial installation of the drive, I booted up from my HDD and made sure that the drive was recognized by windows and such. I had to go into device manager and disk manager I believe, and it asked to pick GPT or MBR (I think) andGPt was auto selected so that is what I clicked.

The only thing in the BBS priority setting is my HDD. Although, I tinkered around in there again jsut a minute ago to see what switching boot mode to Legacy+UEFI did and it added the options in the new picture. I was able to click on Hard Disk Drive BBS priorities and the HDD and M.2 were there. I disabled the HDD and only enabled the M.2 and put it in priority 1. Then I looked back to the main boot page and put the m.2 as boot option 1. It was then up top in the row of icon drives. I exited bios w out saving because I didn't know for sure if it would actually work but what do you think of that?

EDIT forgot link
https://imgur.com/a/8Iaess4