Can’t get M.2 to show up as a boot drive

[minimalist]

All of my drives are showing up but I can’t get it to boot to the m.2 first to do an install of windows 10.

 

i want to do a clean install of Windows 10 onto the m.2 and make sure everything is working.  Then after I’ll wipe the 1tb ssd

[suchamoneypit]

Usually you need to enable an option and switch it to "M.2" to get the drive to appear in BIOS, but since its already there, you might just need to boot into windows with it connected, then open "Disk Management" (search it in windows, and there will be "create and format disk partitions") , you should see the SSD there, you might just have to right click on it in the left-hand side and "initialize disk". It might even prompt you to do this immediately when you launch it and once you hit yes it'll do it for you and then the drive should be able to have windows installed.

 

If thats not the case, then at least show us what the disk management window is looking like because the next step would be to figure exactly how the system is seeing the drive if at all.

[suchamoneypit]

Re-reading your post, you state you're trying to boot to the drive to install windows. How exactly do you think you are going to boot to a drive that has absolutely zero data on it? There is nothing to read off it. To get it installed, you need a CD disk or a bootable USB with the windows iso, you boot to that, and then from there you would be in windows installation off that CD/USB and you would there select the drive to install too, and then windows would install from the bootable media onto the M.2.

[Axeoasis]

Like suchamoneypit said, you can't boot onto a drive that has no data on it to boot from. Instead what you want to do is have the m.2 drive IN the system while you boot into your windows 10 install disk/bootable usb. Windows 10's installer should see the drive and then let you install to it.

[minimalist]

15 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

Usually you need to enable an option and switch it to "M.2" to get the drive to appear in BIOS, but since its already there, you might just need to boot into windows with it connected, then open "Disk Management" (search it in windows, and there will be "create and format disk partitions") , you should see the SSD there, you might just have to right click on it in the left-hand side and "initialize disk". It might even prompt you to do this immediately when you launch it and once you hit yes it'll do it for you and then the drive should be able to have windows installed.

 

If thats not the case, then at least show us what the disk management window is looking like because the next step would be to figure exactly how the system is seeing the drive if at all.

Thanks!  This is what I’m seeing now.  Why so many? 

[suchamoneypit]

4 minutes ago, minimalist said:

Thanks!  This is what I’m seeing now.  Why so many? 

 

You're going to see one partition per drive, but when windows installs, it will make several small partitions as well for it to operate on the drive you install on, so you will see all those partitions. That combined with you having a lot of drives, you're going to see a lot of partitions you could potentially start installing windows on.

 

In that list, you see you have NO 2TB drives listed. It looks like you just tried to install windows on the wrong partition, this wipes everything on it, be careful !! This means its not seeing the M.2 drive. Did you verify the drive is initialized ?

[minimalist]

Just now, suchamoneypit said:

You're going to see one partition per drive, but when windows installs, it will make several small partitions as well for it to operate on the drive you install on, so you will see all those partitions. That combined with you having a lot of drives, you're going to see a lot of partitions you could potentially start installing windows on.

 

In that list, you see you have NO 2TB drives. It looks like you just tried to install windows on the wrong partition, this wipes everything on it, be careful ! This means its not seeing the M.2 drive. Did you verify the drive is initialized ?

No I unplugged all of my other drives.  The only one available is the m.2.  Only issue is I didn’t reformat and thought windows would.  I had cloned my 1 tb ssd on the m.2 and decided to do a clean install 

[suchamoneypit]

3 minutes ago, minimalist said:

No I unplugged all of my other drives.  The only one available is the m.2.  Only issue is I didn’t reformat and thought windows would.  I had cloned my 1 tb ssd on the m.2 and decided to do a clean install 

In that case, you'll want to select Drive 0 Partition 1, 2 and 3, delete all 3 (you have to delete one at a time). These partitions are the old windows install. Once you delete all 3, Drive 0 unallocated space should expand to just short of 2TB. You would then proceed to install windows on this partition.

 

As i said, this will wipe all data present. Good procedure unplugging your other drives !

[minimalist]

3 minutes ago, suchamoneypit said:

In that case, you'll want to select Drive 0 Partition 1, 2 and 3, delete all 3 (you have to delete one at a time). These partitions are the old windows install. Once you delete all 3, Drive 0 unallocated space should expand to just short of 2TB. You would then proceed to install windows on this partition.

 

As i said, this will wipe all data present. Good procedure unplugging your other drives !

Awesome that did it!  Thanks!!!