Today is just the day for asking for help. M.2 drive and Win7

[Radium_Angel]

So I bought this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-Mz-flv1280-128gb-NVMe-M-2-2280-NGFF-PCIe-Solid-State-Drive-SSD/382472858342?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

for my Win7 64bit box.

My motherboard is a MSI B250 PC Mate Pro. Placing the drive in the M.2 slot BIOS sees it.

I'm using AHCI for my SATA ports, Legacy (non-UEFI) for BIOS and a spinner for the boot drive. Eventually I want to install Win7 on it, but not right now. Now I just want to test it.

 

Seems Windows doesn't see it. Doesn't show up in computer management. MSI doesn't have a driver on their website, unless it's called something I'm not familiar with.

Any suggestions/ideas/help here?

[Tabs]

14 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

So I bought this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-Mz-flv1280-128gb-NVMe-M-2-2280-NGFF-PCIe-Solid-State-Drive-SSD/382472858342?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

for my Win7 64bit box.

My motherboard is a MSI B250 PC Mate Pro. Placing the drive in the M.2 slot BIOS sees it.

I'm using AHCI for my SATA ports, Legacy (non-UEFI) for BIOS and a spinner for the boot drive. Eventually I want to install Win7 on it, but not right now. Now I just want to test it.

 

Seems Windows doesn't see it. Doesn't show up in computer management. MSI doesn't have a driver on their website, unless it's called something I'm not familiar with.

Any suggestions/ideas/help here?

 

If you don't already have them, you'll need to install these Windows patches:

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2990941

 

and possibly https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3087873

 

Windows 7 has no support for NVME devices out of the box. You'll be unable to install Windows 7 on the drive without making a custom install image, though that's not an overly difficult process.

[Shimejii]

Windows 7 has had a few issues with NVME drives, you have to look up specific motherboard drivers and see what you can meddle around with in the OS.

[Tabs]

22 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

So I bought this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-Mz-flv1280-128gb-NVMe-M-2-2280-NGFF-PCIe-Solid-State-Drive-SSD/382472858342?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

for my Win7 64bit box.

My motherboard is a MSI B250 PC Mate Pro. Placing the drive in the M.2 slot BIOS sees it.

I'm using AHCI for my SATA ports, Legacy (non-UEFI) for BIOS and a spinner for the boot drive. Eventually I want to install Win7 on it, but not right now. Now I just want to test it.

 

Seems Windows doesn't see it. Doesn't show up in computer management. MSI doesn't have a driver on their website, unless it's called something I'm not familiar with.

Any suggestions/ideas/help here?

Oh, and just an aside - you shouldn't use legacy mode for Windows 7. It's needed for actual legacy OS's like Windows XP, but vista+ all natively support UEFI. Without UEFI mode you don't get features like secure boot, fast boot, boot profiling or advanced recovery options (like the ability to boot straight to bios from within Windows).

 

Edit: Unless you have hardware that actually needs the CSM, that is. In that case, ignore the above.

Edited June 24, 2018 by Tabs

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Tabs said:

Oh, and just an aside - you shouldn't use legacy mode for Windows 7. It's needed for actual legacy OS's like Windows XP, but vista+ all natively support UEFI. Without UEFI mode you don't get features like secure boot, fast boot, boot profiling or advanced recovery options (like the ability to boot straight to bios from within Windows).

 

Edit: Unless you have hardware that actually needs the CSM, that is. In that case, ignore the above.

I dont. Any risk switching from standard BIOS to UEFI for boot?

 

Applied patches, back up and running in legacy mode (UEFI wouldn't see the drives) but NVMe is working fine.

Thx for help

[Tabs]

31 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I dont. Any risk switching from standard BIOS to UEFI for boot?

The board you use has a UEFI firmware, so basically the legacy mode just emulates certain legacy bios features. Keep it as-is for now, but it might be worth remembering if you install Windows to your new SSD - might as well kill two birds with one stone.

 

Changing it now will make your machine unbootable, since UEFI mode requires a different drive layout (GPT instead of MBR) and uses a different bootloader.

 

 

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, Tabs said:

The board you use has a UEFI firmware, so basically the legacy mode just emulates certain legacy bios features. Keep it as-is for now, but it might be worth remembering if you install Windows to your new SSD - might as well kill two birds with one stone.

 

Changing it now will make your machine unbootable, since UEFI mode requires a different drive layout (GPT instead of MBR) and uses a different bootloader.

 

 

As I found out the hard way, but it's okay, the mobo goes back to legacy mode, so no data lost.

Cheers all!

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

As I found out the hard way, but it's okay, the mobo goes back to legacy mode, so no data lost.

Cheers all!

Glad to help

 

If you do decide to reinstall Windows on your Nvme drive, remember you'll need to integrate those patches first. There's a lot of guides online on how to do that, or you can message me on here and I'll give you some tips.

 

Enjoy your new drive!

[Radium_Angel]

11 hours ago, Tabs said:

Glad to help

 

If you do decide to reinstall Windows on your Nvme drive, remember you'll need to integrate those patches first. There's a lot of guides online on how to do that, or you can message me on here and I'll give you some tips.

 

Enjoy your new drive!

Thank you, I will take you up on that in the future.