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

[Head of Vegetables]

ANACHRONiSM님이 먼저 게시:

You don't have to "activate" an NVMe drive, and you've already proven that in some way or another the motherboard is perfectly capable of recognizing it exists - the question is why it the motherboard has to be in Legacy mode even though the M.2 drive is partitioned as GPT.

What file system did you choose to format it as, or did you even have an option?

I did not have an option if I remember correctly

[Head of Vegetables]

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

What are the exact models for...
Nvme ssd
Motherboard

It doesn't sound like your board even supports nvme. Very doubtful to have that on an A320 or B550 board.

Thus probably what occurred is you didn't even install Win10 to your ssd, but rather reinstalled it onto your HDD and your hdd boot loader comes up and shows two instances of Win10 as both now reside all on that hdd.

You also never need an nvme driver during the OS installer. Win10 supports this already and when viewing drives during the installer will use a generic driver to view ahci and nvme. Once you get the OS installed, then you can install your official drivers such as for nvme, and your amd chipset. The Chipset driver will include official drivers for things like ahci sata, usb 2.0 and 3.0

Nvme SSD: Western Digital Wd Vlue SN550 1tb nvme ssd
Motherboard: Msi B350m Bazooka
Here is a link to the motherboard page and it says on the home page if you scroll to "geared up for battle" 9: Turbo M.2 support: NVMe support, up to 32 Gb/s using PCI-Express Gen3 x4

I'm fairly certain that it is installed to the SSD because 1) once I finally get to select which instance of Win 10 to choose, the one on volume 2 is an instant load to the log in screen where as the volume 6 one is the same time as before to boot. 2) Idk if this proves anything, but both drives (HDD and SSD) have windows folders on them.

I recognize the ahci, as that is an option present in my motherboard, though I don't think there is anything to change it to.

[Head of Vegetables]

jason님이 먼저 게시:

Not a windows user but I'll have a guess.

The installer found the existing ESP boot partition on your HDD and used that instead of making a new one on the SSD.

I suppose that is possible though I don't know how to go around that.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Again... just disconnect any extra drives and only attache the nvme ssd and Win10 usb. Do the install. Once at desktop. Shutdown and connect any extra drives.

When the Win10 installer reboots the first time during the installer, this is when to diconnect the usb, as it won't be needed as it will boot from the ssd, being as its the only drive, and continue the install from there.

[Head of Vegetables]

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

Again... just disconnect any extra drives and only attache the nvme ssd and Win10 usb. Do the install. Once at desktop. Shutdown and connect any extra drives.

When the Win10 installer reboots the first time during the installer, this is when to diconnect the usb, as it won't be needed as it will boot from the ssd, being as its the only drive, and continue the install from there.

alright I'll give this a go later, thank you for your help.

[Head of Vegetables]

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

Again... just disconnect any extra drives and only attache the nvme ssd and Win10 usb. Do the install. Once at desktop. Shutdown and connect any extra drives.

When the Win10 installer reboots the first time during the installer, this is when to diconnect the usb, as it won't be needed as it will boot from the ssd, being as its the only drive, and continue the install from there.

update: Removed all other drives> installed windows on the NVME ssd via a usb flashdrive> Once system rebooted for first time, removed Usb> Unable to continue boot as it kept putting me in bios and when I would exit, a windows screen would tell me to insert a bootable device. Only when I reconnected my HDD was I able to finish installing windows but Even with windows fully installed on the ssd, I am unable to boot from it without the HDD being connected.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Read the manual.
Learn how the boot options and order screen works.

When you enter the bios, select Advanced.