Booting a ProDesk 600 G2 Mini from a M.2 NVMe SSD?

[tomenq]

Hello,

I recently bought a ProDesk 600 G2 Mini which I'm very happy with. However, I can't get the machine to boot from the M.2 NVMe SSD I've installed. There are no problems to use it as a second drive in Windows and also no problems installing Windows on it, but even though I can see it in BIOS and select it to boot from, I only get a "no bootable device" message.

Is it possible that such a new machine that has a M.2 port, can't handle booting from a NVMe drive? HP doesn't have any information I can find on this issue, or can someone help me find it? Does anyone know?

Best regards,

Tommy

[soccer_dan]

Can't vouch for consumer class m.2 nvme drives, but HP fully supports HP Turbo Drive G1 (non-nvme) and G2 (nvme) M.2 SSD cards and are configurable as Hard Drive 1 on the Mini, which makes them bootable. It is possible that your SSD has not been properly setup as boot media?

[Big_Dave]

@tomenq

These same questions have been submitted to HP.  I have yet to see any documentation indicating that the M.2 socket 3 slot can be used for booting with HP consumer level PCs. Additionally of course would be which m.2 devices would be supported.

[tomenq]

Thanks for the answer! 🙂

I'm not sure if the drive is set up as boot media. I erroneously thought a NVMe drive was just a faster SSD and that all that was needed was that I could see it in bios. That's obviously wrong! I'll dig around some more and see if I can get it to work, otherwise I'll have to write this off as learning money and settle for a really fast storage drive.

Frustrating, though, that HP can't have this documented. I think this is even more important for a new technology that doesn't work like most users are used to.

[tomenq]

I thought this would be a biod issue, but the question seems to be pretty complex. At least the computer is new and Windows 10 should have the necessary drivers, so the hope lives!

[D_A_N]

You can use either NVME, what you need to focus on is if the drive's interface matches what your mobo supports.  It appears the 600 G2 only supports a PCIe interface on the M.2 port designated for SSD.  Get a SSD that uses that interface and you're good to go.  A M.2 SATA interface will not even be recognized.  You will also need to configure your BIOS as well.

[soccer_dan]

As mentioned in a previous post, the new Intel Skylake generation ProDesk 600 G2 Desktop Mini supports both M.2 SSD technologies with either SATA or NVME interfaces (HP Turbo Drive G1 and G2). There may be confusion around the 2 M.2 slots, however. There is a M.2 PCI-e X1 slot where a WIFI card can be configured by HP, and there is a 2nd M.2 PCI-e X4 interface dedicated to the SSD.

The BIOS on this generation can see and boot from either M.2 SSD technologies.

Hope this clears any confusion

[tomenq]

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@soccer_dan wrote:

As mentioned in a previous post, the new Intel Skylake generation ProDesk 600 G2 Desktop Mini supports both M.2 SSD technologies with either SATA or NVME interfaces (HP Turbo Drive G1 and G2). There may be confusion around the 2 M.2 slots, however. There is a M.2 PCI-e X1 slot where a WIFI card can be configured by HP, and there is a 2nd M.2 PCI-e X4 interface dedicated to the SSD.

The BIOS on this generation can see and boot from either M.2 SSD technologies.

Hope this clears any confusion

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Does this mean that only the HP Turbo Drives are supported, or will any NVMe drive work? I have a Samsung drive which I haven't been able to boot from, once Windows is installed.

[tomenq]

Dan, thank you for your answer. Somehow I managed to miss it until now. :smileyembarrassed:

Anyway, the Samsung 950 Pro drive I have installed is indeed a PCIe drive and it works perfectly as a second drive inside Windows. I need to take another stab at getting it to work as boot drive! For anyone that have the same problem, I'll report back with my findings.

Tommy

[atonous · Accepted solution]

I had a similar problem with the HP ProDesk 600 G2 mini and Plextor PX-G128M6e.

It helped off the legasy and security modes loading in BIOS: Advanced->Security Boot Configuration->Legasy Support Disable and Secure Boot Disable.

And also disable power management PCIe: Advanced->Power Managment Options->PCI Express Power Managment.

Without turning off the power management Windows could not boot from the SSD with errors:

"The application or operating system couldn’t be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.
File: \Windows\system32\winload.efi
Error code:0xc0000185".

After these settings Windows installs and runs correctly from the SSD drive.

P.S. Plextor PX-G128M6e is M.2 AHCI PCIe SSD, not NVMe, but can also be useful to someone.