asked on

Can Gigabyte M/Bs boot off M.2 drives?

Hi,

I installed a Samsung 960 NVMe SSD EVO M.2 1TB drive into a system with a Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H motherboard, with the intent that I could boot from it.
I'm not seeing anything in the BIOS setup though after the fact that this is going to be the case. Apparently it only wants standard SATA drives as boot devices.

I installed Windows 10 on the M.2 SSD drive w/ no issues but it doesn't recognize that as a valid boot source.

Can anyone verify this for me? Would a BIOS update (currently BIOS F7 dated 6/17/14) correct this issue?

Thanks!

--Ben

SOLUTION

arnold

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

nobus

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

Ben Conner

ASKER

Looks like the revision is 1.0 on this m/b. I unplugged the other drives (except the DVD) when I did the install to the M.2 drive. I'm not seeing an option to boot to the M.2 drive in the boot selections after the fact. See below. If I boot to the Windows SATA drive, it shows up fine. I just downloaded the F9 BIOS update for this revision I don't see a downside to applying it and seeing if it shows up after the fact. ?

--Ben

nobus

check in the bios the SATA Controller is set to AHCI Mode

Ben Conner

ASKER

The BIOS update was indeed the issue. I had read through the update descriptions but didn't see where they mentioned fixing a boot from an M.2 drive. Could have missed it. I have to give them credit--the update process is SO much easier than the last time I did that a decade or two ago. Wow...

The SATA controller was already set to AHCI.

Thanks for all the help!

--Ben

nobus

tx for feedback