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How To Install Windows On A PCIe SSD

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peroni View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote peroni Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 Jan 2016 at 12:37am
My scenario was a bit different, hopefully this helps somebody
I had a fully working and customized installation of W10 on a SATA 850 EVO and then decided to add the 950PRO and make it the OS drive.
In no way I was going to reinstall windows.

I plugged the disk and from windows I made a 1:1 copy from the EVO using Samsung own migration tool.
Then disconnected the 850EVO and only left the 950PRO.
Low and behold, the only way to get it to boot was to set CSM to legacy. Once I did that and re-entered UEFI the drive was listed under the boot options.

Note that setting CSM to disabled would prevent the iGPU from displaying anything until windows is booted. Even entering UEFI is not possible anymore. 
So at least on this board, CMS can never be disabled.

Update: The reason why CSM had to be set to legacy was that for some reason my W10 installation was set to legacy bios mode instead of UEFI. 
I followed a guide to convert from legacy to UEFI and now the instructions on the first post match my experience.
Thanks!




Edited by peroni - 18 Jan 2016 at 4:26am
Z170 PRO4
i5 6600
2x8GB Corsair DDR3000
SSD 950 Pro (OS) 850 Evo (data)
GTX 960 4GB
2x LCD
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jan 2016 at 10:32am
Originally posted by JC-Logger JC-Logger wrote:

For some strange reason, I chose to build a high end number cruncher with a PCIe M.2 SSD as the one and only storage device.  I found the instructions on how to set it up in this forum to be a lifesaver.  I would still be flailing away had I not read this.  Thanks to Parsec and others for taking the time to document the O/S install. 

The build is up and running.  i7-4790K, 512 Samsung M.2 PCIe SSD, Asrock Z97 Extreme6, EVGA NEC650G PSU, NVidia R8 390, W10...  All good and running like a well oiled machine.  Heck, I might do this again!!!

Thanks.


Why would it be strange to use a PCIe SSD in your number cruncher? Makes perfect sense to me.

Glad the guide was helpful, thanks for the feedback!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Jan 2016 at 11:46pm
I decided to try installing Windows 10 on a RAID 0 volume of Samsung 950 Pro PCIe NVMe SSDs. A few ASRock board users seem to be having difficulty with that, so I had to see for myself.



This is on my ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, two 256GB Samsung 950 Pros. I had no trouble with the installation itself, and I did not do anything basically different than I described in my procedure at the beginning of this thread. So it is certainly possible to install Windows 10 on a RAID 0 volume of 950 Pros. I'm using that PC now to write this post.

I'm writing up a step by step guide on how to do this, which I will add to this thread soon.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DooRules Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Jan 2016 at 12:37am
So the IRST CP says 4000 mb/s pcie link speed. Funny that read scaling was so poor at this point with my two in RO. 
Still very early in this game so more to come for sure I think.

As you found parsec I found the install procedure pretty much straight forward. Older boards may present other issues, not sure.

Lets see some numbers Smile


On another matter I see MSI has released beta bios's with Skylake fix from Intel, I would assume the good folks at Asrock won't be far behind.


Edited by DooRules - 21 Jan 2016 at 12:38am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Jan 2016 at 2:45pm
Numbers you say, what was I thinking... let's see what I've got here:



I'm not sure if you had the Sammy NVMe driver installed when you did your RAID 0 testing, but I had a surprise (not really) after I installed Win 10 on this volume. All I did was load the IRST 14.8 F6 driver during the installation, which made the RAID 0 array visible to Windows.

After Win 10 booted and I was installing basic drivers, I ran the Samsung NVMe 1.1 driver installer. "No Samsung NVMe SSDs connected", or close to that message. The usual Samsung non-support of RAID.

So what driver am I using? Only IRST. I have no other entries in Device Manager, such as under Storage Controllers, for the Samsung NVMe driver. I don't see anything that is an entry for the MSoft NVMe driver. Under Disk drives there is the Intel RAID 0 Volume, and nothing else for the 950s.

Since the 950s are in a RAID 0 array, the only places in the UEFI I can see this drive are in the IRST entry in the Advanced screen, and the entry in the Boot screen and Boot Manager. Nothing is shown in System Browser once the 950s are in a RAID array.

I tried the Beta UEFI 2.31 which adds an "NVMe Configuration Item" for the 950 Pro. That UEFI will list the 950(s) as an entry in the Advanced screen, but once they are in a RAID array, that listing is gone.

Another side effect is I don't get a temperature listing for the 950's in HWiNFO once in a RAID array.

Just as you noticed, the Read scaling is poor compared to the Write scaling. Again, the RAID 0 random IOPs are reduced in RAID 0 compared to a single 950 Pro. In use it boots from the POST beep in the usual 2 - 3 seconds, seems like a limit in Windows. The IRST 14.8 Release Notes include listing a bug with poor performance when RST PCIe Storage Remapping is Enabled, as fixed in 14.8. IMO, no, the performance issue has not been fixed.

Anvil results are interesting:









The single 950 Pro high queue depth results are better than two in RAID 0. That was not the case with SATA SSDs. There's an obvious reason IMO why this is true, but I don't see it yet. Confused


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Associated Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Jan 2016 at 10:12pm
Any ideas if Samsung SM951-NVMe would work on X99X Killer 3.1? And how come there are no BIOS updates for this MOBO Confused
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Jan 2016 at 2:06pm
The 3.1 series of ASRock mother boards have all of the UEFI/BIOS updates that the original/non-3.1 version of the same board has.

You can tell by the date of the initial release UEFI of the 3.1 version of the board, which is newer than the majority if not all of the UEFI versions of the non-3.1 version board.

Your board has a Beta UEFI/BIOS release.

I have an X99 Extreme6/3.1 board, which also has but one UEFI version available, plus two Beta. I use an Intel 750 NVMe SSD as the OS drive with that board.

I'm sure an NVMe SM951 would work with your board, as an OS drive too. You'll need to learn how to install Windows in UEFI booting mode, and you must use Windows 8.1 or 10, since those versions only have a native MSoft NVMe driver. I don't think the 950 Pro's NVMe driver will work with the NVMe SM951, unless something has changed in the new version from Samsung.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote hiluke Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2016 at 6:08am
Thanks for this guide.
I recently built a Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming itx/ac system with a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512GB boot drive.
I didn't realise with the default UEFI settings that Windows 10 wouldn't give me the option of MBR or GPT, so my initial install of Windows 10 was MBR.
From reading your post, it made it quite straightforward to delete the existing partitions, and then re-partition and re-install Windows 10 (just using the Windows installer) as GPT with UEFI.
Ultra Fast Boot is awesome!

Couple of points which I couldn't find confirmation on prior to switching over to EFI boot:
- I just used the Microsoft tool to create a bootable Windows 10 installer USB, and I used this same USB for both legacy and EFI installs. No need to use Rufus or any other programs to create a specialised UEFI USB like I saw on a lot of other sites.
- I have a few extra HDD's as storage drives. These do not need to be partitioned as GPT for EFI and Ultra Fast Boot to work. I wasn't sure if the MBR formatted drives would register, but they were fine.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Mar 2016 at 10:06am
Originally posted by hiluke hiluke wrote:

Thanks for this guide.
I recently built a Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming itx/ac system with a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512GB boot drive.
I didn't realise with the default UEFI settings that Windows 10 wouldn't give me the option of MBR or GPT, so my initial install of Windows 10 was MBR.
From reading your post, it made it quite straightforward to delete the existing partitions, and then re-partition and re-install Windows 10 (just using the Windows installer) as GPT with UEFI.
Ultra Fast Boot is awesome!

Couple of points which I couldn't find confirmation on prior to switching over to EFI boot:
- I just used the Microsoft tool to create a bootable Windows 10 installer USB, and I used this same USB for both legacy and EFI installs. No need to use Rufus or any other programs to create a specialised UEFI USB like I saw on a lot of other sites.
- I have a few extra HDD's as storage drives. These do not need to be partitioned as GPT for EFI and Ultra Fast Boot to work. I wasn't sure if the MBR formatted drives would register, but they were fine.


I'm glad that helped you, thanks for saying so!!

Installing Windows to use the EFI bootloader is really not difficult at all, it is just a few configuration settings before the Windows installation is started. Windows 7 needs a fix in order to use the EFI bootloader, just the location of a file must be corrected. Beyond Win 7 no fix is needed.

I started doing this with SATA SSDs almost four years ago now. There is no downside to doing this, as SATA drives will boot in Legacy (MBR) or EFI (GPT) mode depending upon the CSM configuration. The Windows installer puts BOTH MBR and GPT partitions on the OS drive when the installation is configured to use the EFI bootloader. PCIe SSDs won't boot in Legacy mode, NVMe SSDs in particular. The AHCI SM951 might boot in Legacy mode, I never tested that when I had the chance. Pinch

The default UEFI settings will not allow an EFI booting installation to occur, unless you find an entry in the boot order for your installation media that is: "UEFI: <device name>". Normally you would see entries of, "AHCI: <device name>" or "RAID: <device name>", if you are using RAID mode.

The irony of having UEFI firmware (a standard BIOS is also firmware) as we have for years now is the only feature being used by default that is provided by UEFI firmware is the GUI point and click interface for the firmware options. Otherwise the UEFI firmware is run in emulated BIOS firmware mode by the Compatibility Support Module, or CSM.

That is done for compatibility purposes with older hardware, particularly video cards. Which means by default our POST procedures and UEFI firmware runs in Legacy/BIOS mode, with 16bit addressing, only 1MB of memory available, and all the limitations of BIOS firmware designed in 1998, for the hardware of that time. That is why I advocate disabling CSM completely, but that only works with EFI booting OS installations and video sources that are GOP compatible. (All Intel integrated graphics are GOP compatible since Sandy Bridge, with the appropriate VBIOS, that ASRock has provided at least since their Z77 mother boards.)

Regarding your points:

You are right about NOT needing any special tool to create the USB flash drive installation media for EFI booting. The use of Rufus, etc, while just fine is simply a convenience. Some people format their USB flash drives as NTFS for other purposes, but for creating a Windows installation media, the USB flash drive must be formatted as FAT32. Rufus and other tools prepares the USB flash drive by cleaning it and formatting it as FAT32. That is the only "magic" that Rufus and other tools perform on the USB flash drive. Again, these tools are great by not at all required.

I've created Windows installation USB flash drives by simply mounting an ISO image (selecting all the files and then left click and choose Mount), and then Send To the USB flash drive. You can do that with a Windows installation optical disk too, using the same procedure.

I'll ask you (as a quiz Wink ), what is it that causes an MBR/Legacy or GPT/EFI installation to happen when using the same installation media for both types of installations?

You are right that only the OS drive must have a GPT partition for EFI booting and using the Ultra Fast boot setting of Fast Boot. I don't think I said the other drives did in my guide, if so that is wrong. All the other drives in a PC besides the drive we are booting from are just along for the ride, and contribute nothing to the boot process. That's the key here, only the OS drive is involved in actual boot process, which is obvious really.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Eric Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Mar 2016 at 4:50am
Thanks for this guide.

My trouble started when I tried to add some data drives in a RAID array to what I thought was a successful windows installation. Turns out I had installed in legacy mode (before I found this guide).

Starting over and following the instructions, I had the same trouble as thecrimsonchin with the missing CD/DVD driver. This was not my experience the first time around. That time, I got past "install now" and had to use the "load driver' button to load the NVSe driver. This time I don't get that far as I get "...required CD/DVD driver is missing".

He solved his problem by buying a new OS, I don't want to do that just yet.  Thanks in advancec for any help anyone can provide.

Eric


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