Z620 booting from Intel and Samsung NVMe drives (with OPROMs)

[Rhothgar]

Many thanks SDH.

I've already hit a brick wall in that the drive I've bought won't delete under DiskPart as it was previously used as a PageFile and has 68Gb of files on it.  Basic stuff but I really expected a clean drive to start with.

Just going to get a repair going for now so it doesn't load and I am sure Diskpart will then be able to delete it when I on X:/Sources.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[SDH]

So, you were running DiskPart from an elevated CMD prompt and the "clean" command did not work?

I've also used the old DBAN program to wipe deep hidden layers off a drive but that takes longer.

EDIT: I think you'll be ready to run with the basics of the new clean install technique. It is critical to have the target drive prepared properly ahead of time, to have the Rufus USB correctly configured, and to have your BIOS set to factory defaults as described below. Here it is:

1. Cold boot and get into BIOS, change BIOS to factory defaults, save changes on the way out, and shut down. Now cold boot once again and do that single change from Legacy to EFI for the OPROM enabling, save that change on the way out of BIOS again, shut down. By the way, I am disconnected from the network at this point and until the end. That makes the install go more smoothly with less MS nagging. Answer that you don't have internet when the installer nags you once.

2. Have your power still off and now have a USB2 (or 3) drive with the Rufus 4.9 install (created with a freshly downloaded W11 24H2 ISO) plugged into a USB2 port... not a USB3 port. "Freshly downloaded" because older W11 24H2 ISOs have old earlier installs and you'll need to go through the sequence of multiple W11 24H2 Cumulative Update installs. Doing it this way got me to only needing a single 6/25 CU download and update, not a series of those.

3.  Insert your ZTD G2 into PCIe slot #4. That is an x8 form factor slot, but the card will only use the first x4 lanes. The 950 Pro inside the card will be in a RAW condition, GPT partitioned, blank. I found if I used a NTFS formatted drive at this stage it added some unnecessary low level stuff. You want to present the W11 24H2 installer a RAW drive to work with. Power cord is removed, of course, whenever working inside the case.

4.  Close up, plug in your power cord, cold boot. Because there is only the Rufus USB drive (bootable) BIOS will default to booting off of it without you needing to do any F10 or F9 button pushing. The W11 installer will open and you can proceed with the clean install. The first series of steps are blue background. At about 77% in an auto-reboot will happen and the pages change to black background. Enough of an install is already present on your Intel/Samsung OPROM drive so that the W11 BIOS will default to the drive rather than the bootable USB. W11 install will proceed with 1 or 2 added auto-reboots.

5. When done you can shut down, reconnect to the net, do your BIOS tuning as you wish, and do Windows Updates. There will be a password window... the password is blank so you can just hit enter and keep no password until you add one later.

This gets you a nice clean install with least hassle.

[Rhothgar]

Getting the retaining screw for the M.2 is difficult without mangling the Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum!

[Rhothgar]

Exactly right, yes. 

Rufus just completed so will start process and go into Diskpart from repair option. 

[Rhothgar]

OK. One issue with that video if you follow it blindly as I did is that the boot mode is incorrect for a Z420 unless perhaps if I wipe the BIOS settings as currently running in MBR mode and have written USB using GPT.

Tried changing a few BIOS settings to no avail. 

Going to try and Diskpart one more time from old hard drive which is now plugged back in and running. I did disconnect for the anticipated install. 

For future reference for others, this is what I got:-

EDIT: 15:42 GMT

Just changes BIOS settings to deal with EFI so I can boot to new drive. It’s got Win 7 Professional on it.   Am trying to boot to USB now and will try Diskpart again. Nearly there!

[SDH]

Once you get ahold of it put it on the M.2 before you plug the stick into the M.2's socket. The M.2 stick becomes a hold-down screw holder!

[SDH]

You've got to get your M.2 drive prepared correctly before rather than after. Clean/GPT convert first. Then NTFS format it, then just clean it. I posted the steps just above.

Edit.... this is why you need to have BIOS set to factory defaults. You've not let the EFI part of the ZX20 BIOS exist if you're running only in Legacy mode. You'll get there.

[Rhothgar]

Yes indeed.  It was just fiddly trying to remove screw down holder to then put it on the M.2. 

Am in Diskpart now. 

[SDH]

I double checked and just finished a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB W11 24H2 using the steps above. I found some added info to include. The process works as well on the Samsung M.2 drive as on the specified Intel Add-In Card hardware. This is not a bad project once you've done it once.

I'll make an install PDF and update it as needed. Need a break for a few days.

[Rhothgar]

No rush from my perspective!

I think there is enough information in this thread to satisfy everyone.

Note that my previous post didn't upload.

I was up and running yesterday by 5pm GMT.  Everything is good.  Thanks again.