How to boot my Envy 23 D260QD from the M.2 drive?

[Barkfin]

I noticed this computer has two PCIe x1 Gen.2 slots on it, one of which is used for the WiFi radio, but the other one is empty.

The computer has the slot-load BluRay and a 2TB WD20EARS (green hard drive, particularly slow).

I could have upgraded to a SATA SSD, but then I'd have to remove this perfectly good WD drive which is large yet cumbersome.

I also didn't want to disconnect the slot BluRay drive, and the computer has only two SATA plugs.

So I heard the PCIe x1 Gen.2 slot is good for about 500 MB/s, which is about 5x faster than any SATA mechanical HDD (and more than 5x faster than the WD20EARS). Good enough for me!

Incidentally I updated to Windows 10 64-bit and the BIOS with SP70474 (version 8.17 Rev.A, dated 22-Jan-2015, supposedly improves security of UEFI code and variables).

The adapter I used is the Sintech ST-M2MPE (M.2 (NGFF) nVME SSD to Mini PCIe Adapter for Samsung 950 960):

http://eshop.sintech.cn/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=130_137&products_id=1266

And the M.2 drive is the WD Blue SN550 in 1TB size:

https://shop.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-sn550-nvme-ssd#WDS100T2B0C

Then I used Macrorit partition manager to reduce all the HDD partitions to fit inside 1TB, then I used Clonezilla to backup the HDD to the M.2 drive.

So here is what's happening. The computer boots and starts the HDD, but then it detects a "disk signature collision error" within Windows, it disables drive 1, and then loads just fine off of the M.2 drive. The computer works just fine from the M.2, everything is much much faster than before, it's performing exactly as I had expected.

The computer is unable to boot if I do any of these things:

- reformat the mechanical HDD

- remove any of the HDD partitions

- physically pull the mechanical HDD

It's like, Windows is perfectly happy to boot from the M.2 but only if it's assured that the mechanical HDD is still present and unchanged. Then it disables it (disk signature collision error) and works just fine from the M.2.

But I still want to use that extra 2TB of space?

Thanks much for any help.

[banhien]

@Barkfin 

The specs of your machine is

   https://support.hp.com/au-en/product/hp-envy-23-d200-touchsmart-all-in-one-desktop-pc-series/5359011...

The second M.2 slot uses same characteristics of the first one, it does not support SSD for storage

Regards.

[Barkfin]

Ok two mistakes:

1. I think I tricked you - I'm already booting from the PCIe slot. It's just in an error condition. So anybody who says "you can't do that," I'm afraid you're mistaken, I'm already doing it. "Ok but you're not supposed to be able to," says who?

2. Even though there are two PCIe x1 Gen.2 slots on this computer, and you might want to think they are identical, no they are not. You'd have to actually look inside a physical computer to know this (and I have looked inside and I do know this). The one slot with the wi-fi card takes the shorter cards, and the other one that was left empty takes the longer cards. Did you know there are two lengths of mini PCIe cards? The first one is called "half height" and the empty one is called "full height".

I'm going to have to ask you to give this post a "thumbs up" to acknowledge that I corrected your mistakes. Obviously I'm not going to be holding my breath...

(Incidentally: if you actually look at the Sintech adapter that I had bought, it fits either length. You'd have to click the link I had provided and examine the picture to see how they did this, but as far as I'm concerned, it would work equally well in either slot.)

In the meantime I'm awaiting somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, please!