Cannot boot from Transcend M.2 nvme

[3.14159]

Hello,

 

I am having trouble booting from this Transcend SSD I got off Amazon. I bought it as a second drive to boot linux. My first drive (Samsung 970 SSD) has no trouble booting in both PCIe slots on my MSI Z490m board. I installed Windows on that SSD and it runs fine. 

 

The Transcend SSD is recognized by the board - it appears in BIOS under "Storage" - however is not present in the Boot Priority list or Boot Menu.

 

Are some SSD not usable as a boot drive? I don't understand why it's not on the Boot Priority list. I've tested in both slots with and without the second SSD present - not sure what else to try. I just spent the last few hours installing Linux on this SSD and I had no trouble partitioning and writing to the SSD while installing linux (Arch).

 

Thanks again for any help.

 

DR

[Electronics Wizardy]

Did you install a os on the drive?

WIth uefi boot you don't boot to the drive, you boot to the efi partition on the drive, so it won't show up as a device until you isntall a os

 

Also turn of secure boot.

[3.14159]

I did indeed install an OS on the EFI partition, here is the part of the tutorial I followed where the bootloader is installed on the EFI partition. Also I just confirmed secure boot is disabled in BIOS.

 

One thing I just came across while confirming those - in BIOS there is "NVMe SSD Self-Test" (last option under settings\advanced). When this self-test is selected the menu looks like this:

 

M2_2   Samsung SSD 97               Ready               500GB

M2_1    TS128GMTE...              Not Support          128GB

 

(Currently have both SSD plugged in). I abbreviated the Transcend SSD name, but does this mean this MSI board cannot support this card? I seemed to have no trouble making modifications to it during the Linux install.

[3.14159]

One last thing: When I go into "Secure Erase+" in BIOS advanced settings I get the same menu as the SSD Self-Test from my previous post post except they both say "Ready". I didn't erase either SSD but it seems like sometimes the board can recognize the Transcend SSD.

[3.14159]

Got the Transcend drive to successfully boot fedora.

 

Also tried installing Arch on my Samsung SSD and that failed too. I think it's safe to say the problem is something I'm doing and not the hardware.

 

For now I will have Windows on Samsung and fedora on the Transcend.