Adding an M.2 SSD as a boot drive

[fotoTX]

I recently bought this HP Envy 17M-AE011DX laptop from best buy.  It was shipped with a 1TB SATA drive.  I wish to add a 256GB to 512 GB M.2 SSD to this configuration, moving the boot drive to the SSD.   Im struggling with getting the configuration right.  Some of this may stem from my confusion as to the interface used for the M.2 slot.  In the Service and Maintance Manual, it specs various sized and types of M.2 drives as well as the combinations of HDD and SSD.    It seems to me to suggest that either SATA or PCIe SSD can be used (I didnt think that was possible, is it?)  Service Manual linked here

I happen to have both interface types of M.2 SSD and have tried both with varying degrees of "failure" to achieve a working solution!  Here are the two scenarios:

1.  Added a 512GB (HP) M.2 SSD SATA Drive - I can add this drive and windows recognizes it but I cannot get windows to install on it.  I have unplugged the current HDD where Windows sits today and tried to reboot into a Windows 10 Home 64bit  media creattion USB.  But,  despite setting up the BIOS to boot from USB first, it seems to ignore my boot priority order and continue to boot from the existing 1 TB SATA drive.   So I cannot boot from the USB to install Windows on the new SSD.

Also, Ive tried to use HP Recovery Mgr to configure the new drive.    Im able to get through all of the partition, formatting, application copying but when it reboots to begin the installation phase, it reverts back to the start of the recovery process.     Ive messed with this most of the afternoon and am stuck!    Not quite sure where to go from here!

2.  Added a 240GB (PNY) M.2 SSD PCIe drive - Its an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3x4 NVMe SSD.  I thought this would be straight forward to install and for windows to recognize...Well,   it seemed to substantially slow down my laptop, seemed to cause conflicts with my WLAN and Logictec wireless mouse.  Could not get Windows to fully recognize the drive and when trying to Initialize the drive in Disk Mgt, it throws an error to the effect that the drive is to small for GPI?   When tyring MBR, it also throws an error (sorry I dont have the exact wording).  So I could not get it to initialize.

While I thought that this was the M.2 SSD drive interface specified in the Service Manual,  I cannot even get Windows to recognize the drive!   Gave up on this one.

My questions are:  What is the drive interface that should be used?   Does HP somehow block adding a second SSD in this particular model?  Does HP limit the 2 combinations (sizes) of drives in this model?   Any next steps you can suggest for either scenario 1 or 2?   Thanks for any insight you can provide.

[Photoray002]

Hello

I will try to help best I can tonight.

Im not sure I follow you correctly, so I will start out with this…

The HP recovery media looks for the same size drive (or larger) to install to. Smaller drives don’t get recognized. This is probably the culprit for that issue.

You say you cannot get the Windows USB installer drive to be recognized.

How did you create the Microsoft Media Creation USB installer? Did you do it directly from the creation software download or are you using an ISO that you saved and are using something else to burn it with?

If burning it directly from the Microsoft Media Creation tool (the best method), then it should be recognized in the UEFI when you tap the F9 key at startup - to bring up the list of drives. Then, you just select the USB drive and boot.

Provided you recently created it.

If it is still not recognized, two things might help.

1. Turn off Secure Boot in the bios (and enable Legacy if offered). Then save and try again.

2. If no joy, re-enable Secure boot and try a different USB drive - different model/brand. Use one that is at least 8 GB but no larger than 32.

YES keeping the old HDD disconnected throughout the process is a good idea.

Let me know if this helps.

[fotoTX · Accepted solution]

Hi Photoray and thanks for your suggestions.  I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I am up and running!   With a fresh head this morning, I was able to reconfigure the SSD as a boot drive and relegate my original drive to a data drive.    Following your advise heres what I did and found.

• Recreated a Windows 10 Media USB on a different and smaller USB drive.
• Installed the SATA SSD and inalized it.  Still could not initalize the PCIe SSD.
• Removed the existing boot drive.
• Booted into the USB sucessfully (I was not aware of F9!
• I found that I had to go back into the BIOS and move the original boot drive to the bottom of the list and the USB to the top on both legacy and UEFI lists.
• Once Windows files were copied from the USB and windows restarted, I had to remove the USB to avoid file installations again. 
• Finished Windows installation, cleaned up and drivers that were missing.
• Cracked open the laptop and reconnected the original HDD, earsed and reconfigured it (and CD) drive letters.
• Started updating rest of drivers and HP applications
• Did a windows update to complete.
• Went back and turned off Legacy and made sure that the correct boot order is in place.

Still working through some updates and stuff but looks like things are back up and stable.

SDD M.2 drive as a boot drive is amazingly fast.

Again, thanks for the advise.

[Photoray002]

What you did was pretty much right.

Yep sometimes for what ever reason, a specific USB drive just wont get recognized. Certain Sandisk flash drives have been know to do this on HP's from time to time. Using a different USB drive was the ticket.

If you had to enable legacy mode, I am quessing you had an "early" version of Windows 10 installer, not the recent Creators Update version? Otherwise, the bios should have recognized the MS USB installer in UEFI mode.

As for the F9 shortcut, next time you can access the whole list of shortcuts at start by tapping the Esc key. You can also find access to the UEFI Diagnostics tool there.

Anyways, glad its working now.

If any of this was helpful, please finalize the thread and mark it solved.

Good luck.

[fotoTX]

Hi and Thanks again.

Just one more thing....I hadnt restarted since I diabled legacy in the Bios.   I restarted several times and each time, windows started in Recovery Mode, PC need to be repaired,  A required device isnt or cant be connected, Error Code 0XC000000e.

Now, I found I can simply hit escape and Windows boots up fine.  I tried to go through the repair process but it said it could not repair the startup file.    

I found if I reenabled Legacy it works fine.   From what I can tell, it does not like the OS Boot Manager which points to the OLD HDD.  Could the OS Boot Manager be looking at the OLD HDD and throwing this error?   Any idea why this error is being thrown?  Why the OS Boot Manager would still refernec the OLD HDD?

As an aside, the new boot drive (m.2 SATA SSD) was inialized as a MBR and not a GPT.  Does this contribut to the above error or will it be a problem that will need to be fixed.  All else seems to be runny fine and snappy.  Ive added a screen grab of my disk partitions  Disk 0 is boot and Disk 1 is data.

Thanks!

[Photoray002]

OK lets try this...

Did you wipe all the partitions on the HDD?

You can install a utility like this one to delete all partitions easily (there are many ways to do it, its just easy to use something like this). Install this and wipe the HDD completely. I would do this first.

How to wipe the drive with Partition Assistant.

Then disconnect the HDD to make it easier.

Boot into the bios and reset it to Default. Save and Exit.

You want secure boot on / legacy disabled.

How did you create the windows installer?

Are you using the latest version of Win10 with Creators Update or are you using an older ISO burned with a different tool?

You need to create it with this Create media Windows 10 and it will download the latest version.

Use the Windows tool to create the bootable USB drive directly.

Then you can boot with Secure Boot on and install Windows. Use F9 for boot options again, it will be recognized.

It should now initialize as GPT during installation.

During the installing of Windows 10 at the beginning, choose Custom install and you will get the option to delete all the current partitions on the SSD. You will want to do this.

[fotoTX]

Thanks again for you guideance!  I probably made life hard on myself....but I learned alot !

I converted the SSD system drive from MBR to GPT using Windows MBR2GPT, found in the system32 folder.  I learned that this did the converstion without destroying data.  That worked well and it created the EFI System Partition on my boot drive.  The one that was needed to stop the boot error.

I ended up using easeUS partitioning application - the free version -  to clean up my boot drive to only have the system and EFI partitions.  I did the same on my Data drive and made sure to remove the legacy EFI System Partition and all other partitions.  The Bootloader was looking at this one and the one on C and getting confused..for lack of a better term.

So,  now my BIOS is back to degault using UEFI boot, my 2 harddrives cleaned up and stable....Best of all no errors....so far so good.

Thanks again for you insight and suggestions.  

Regards

[Photoray002]

Ya I have no way of knowing what you did at the time of all this or your tech level,  I can only assume and try to write things up as such.

Thanks for the update.