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Installing a 960 evo m.2

NTM2003

NTM2003

Joined
Jan 3, 2015
Messages
1,224 (0.32/day)
Location
Richmond, VA, USA
System Specs
System Name lazy ass
Processor Intel i5 7600k 4.2 GHz
Motherboard MSI Enthusiastic Gaming Z270 (Z270 GAMING M3)
Cooling H80i GT V1 liquid cooling
Memory CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB PRO 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 3600MHz
Video Card(s) Gigabyte AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 8G 11Gbps
Storage seagate 2tb HDD/boot drive SSD Samsung 960 evo M.2
Display(s) ASUS 28inch 4k
Case Corsair Graphite Series 760T
Audio Device(s) mobo
Power Supply EVGA SuperNOVA 750G1 750 watts
Mouse Razer Mamba wireless/ needs a new one razer sucks
Keyboard Corsair K68 RGB
Software Windows 10 home
Benchmark Scores to be updated soon
My Samsung 960 evo m.2 comes in tomorrow going to install it,can I use the screw that came with the mobo or do I have to buy one? I read the reviews were people needed to buy one but I’m guessing they just lost it. And my bios is easy to set up as a boot drive to so hopefully everything goes well.
 
use the one that came with mobo
 
Will the bios read it auto and set it up after a system restart I haven’t done this before but I’ve gone through my bios settings on msi software it seems very easy just to select a boot drive. 250gb should be enough space for a boot drive.
 
Last edited:
It will recognize the drive, its up to you to install your OS
 
Oye...

Clearly, use the screw that came with the mobo... no need to buy it if you have it.

As far as setting it up. You may have to format it... I don't recall. But if you want to boot from it, you are going to have to install an OS on it.
 
Some newer bios have an SSD format tool. Not sure if yours does. Check that. If not, you can easily do it in Windows with the "Disk Management" tool.. or if you're installing Windows from scratch, you'll get a format/partition tool right away after you type in your CD-Key.

If you have multiple drives, it may be tricky. It may let you format, but you might not be able to create an actual OS partition scheme (with main and recovery partitions that Windows automatically uses). If that happens, try installing windows with only the NVME drive plugged in. Detach others. It should let you partition things correctly this way. Afterwards, you can plug any other drives in.

Also, I haven't seen this happen with SATA SSDs. Just NVME.
 
If you bought your motherboard new, there either should be one in the box, or already pre-installed in the standoff on the motherboard itself.

Also, there is a chance you might be able to clone your OS partition, if you had one set up, and its smaller than the drive your purchased.
 
There is easy way to set up a boot drive on my bios so hopefully it be easy
 
gdallsk said:
Also, there is a chance you might be able to clone your OS partition, if you had one set up, and its smaller than the drive your purchased.
Click to expand...

I tried that when I installed my Samsung 960 EVO m.2 NVMe yesterday. Something went wrong with the tool from Samsung, the 960 wouldn't boot Windows, and the RAID I had it on wouldn't boot Windows. I had to recreate the RAID, and install Windows from a USB drive.

I see someone said to unplug the other drives when installing Windows, and I agree that is a good idea. Others might, but I don't trust the Windows Installer not to mess up the other drives.

EDITED for spelling
 
aDigitalPhantom said:
I tried that when I installed my Samsung 960 EVO m.2 NVMe yesterday. Something went wrong with the tool from samsung, and the 960 wouldn't boot Windows, and the RAID I had it on wouldn't boot Windows. I had to recreate the RAID, and install Windows from a USB drive.

I see someone said to unplug the other drives when installing Windows, and I agree that is a good idea. Other might, but I don't trust Windows Installer not to mess up the other drives.
Click to expand...
I’ve just done that with my 960 Evo, cloned all the contents from my old SSD, and it worked flawlessly without any hiccups.
 
aDigitalPhantom said:
I tried that when I installed my Samsung 960 EVO m.2 NVMe yesterday. Something went wrong with the tool from Samsung, the 960 wouldn't boot Windows, and the RAID I had it on wouldn't boot Windows. I had to recreate the RAID, and install Windows from a USB drive.

I see someone said to unplug the other drives when installing Windows, and I agree that is a good idea. Others might, but I don't trust the Windows Installer not to mess up the other drives.

EDITED for spelling
Click to expand...

Well, the interesting thing is I've had to unplug everything but nvme, but not a second time. It's like it only acted wonky on absolute first use. Ever since I've done Windows installs, things behave even with multiple drives.
 
Windows is already on my HDD so hopefully I won’t have to reinstall it I do have the usb that windows came on. But I am also planing on replacing my HDD with a 10 tb HDD but in a few months not now
 
NTM2003 said:
Windows is already on my HDD so hopefully I won’t have to reinstall it I do have the usb that windows came on. But I am also planing on replacing my HDD with a 10 tb HDD but in a few months not now
Click to expand...
Do you have your OS partitioned off on your hard drive?
 
If you want to run windows off the NVME drive, you have to install it again, or clone it over from the drive it is currently on.

I'm confused at what you want to use this drive for... make sense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You say you want it as a boot drive.........
NTM2003 said:
There is easy way to set up a boot drive on my bios so hopefully it be easy
Click to expand...
NTM2003 said:
250gb should be enough space for a boot drive.
Click to expand...

.... but then say you dont want ot have to reinstall it?
 
I’m using the ssd for boot and when I get the 10tb HDD that be used for storage like games mostly
 
You still haven't answered my question. If your 2TB hard drive was the whole OS + your stuff drive, you won't be able to clone that, as it will be too large for the destination drive, and you'll have to re-install Windows.
 
NTM2003 said:
I’m using the ssd for boot and when I get the 10tb HDD that be used for storage like games mostly
Click to expand...

Well, you'll need to reinstall windows or clone a windows install on to the nvme.

And like I said, if you install windows, I'd suggest just having the nvme in at first. Once you get that out of that way, then your HDD can be plugged in.

It might work with both though. Try that first. I don't mean to confuse you or anything.
 
Yea I’m new to all this setting up drives so bear with me. If I have to reinstall windows again I will I have it on the usb drive when I brought windows 10 and yes my 2tb was the only drive I have for now with windows installed on it
 
NTM2003 said:
Yea I’m new to all this setting up drives so bear with me. If I have to reinstall windows again I will I have it on the usb drive when I brought windows 10 and yes my 2tb was the only drive I have for now with windows installed on it
Click to expand...

Personally, I'd suggest backing up personal stuff from that 2TB.. if you can. Put what you can on a USB flash or something. Then format the HDD and unplug it. Then just boot up your windows install disc and install it on the NVME. Later plug the HDD in and should be your D or E drive.
 
I don’t have personal things on it just photos and games I can reinstall the games and my photos or on my could on amazon
 
NTM2003 said:
I don’t have personal things on it just photos and games I can reinstall the games and my photos or on my could on amazon
Click to expand...

Makes it easier then. Just format it and plug it out for now.

BEFORE you do that now, maybe try out what the Windows install screen shows with both in. Maybe it'll let you partition everything correctly with both drives in.

What you want is it to let you make Recovery/System EFI/and Primary partitions for the NVME drive. The reason why I said to plug out the HDD is because it's a used Windows drive and it will already have those partitions. When you install windows, it may act funny and not let you partition the NVME with those partitions since it only allows one drive to have them.
 
I will have to see if there’s any videos of installing on on my mobo msi but all the msi bios for that generation should be the same, search msi installing ssd or something
 
Update: well I f**ked up something when installing my m.2 just dropped it off at my local it shop $100 for everything but money ain’t a issue for me just went everything to be set up right. I don’t work on PCs all day everyday I’m more if a gamer so hopefully everything will come back right and my pc will be a lot faster. Plus my crappy Verizon dsl has been down since Thursday last week so I can’t download software or anything for it.
 
WTH did you do??? Installing an M.2 drive is like breathing... you don't need to think about it...
 
I’m not sure lol, I thought I knew the bios settings and I had the USB drive for windows 10 maybe I used it to many times or something but it’s the same pc so I thought I can use it as many times as I could to reinstall windows, I can build PCs but just not the hard drive and boot drive set up.
 
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