[Guide] NVMe-boot without modding your UEFI/BIOS (Clover-EFI bootloader method)

You can install clover on HDD.
However it’s best to let it wipe the drive before installation.
Also, you probably won’t be able to have OS on that drive (if you want Clover booting to work).
Check my post for more info : LINK

That’s why I prefer to use CopactFlash for Clover, and connect them internally to unused IDE port (via CF-IDE adapter).
They don’t require drivers or USB boot support to work (you can even install DOS on them, if you want to).
You may not be able to use them on a laptop tho…

Hi

works great.

once i select the hard drive with win 10 can i change the script to automatically boot it and bypass clover all together ?

if not what thigs in the script can i change to reduce boot up time ?

Thanks

Just have a look to post #90!

To reduce the boot-time you can change the timeout in the section

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<key>Timeout</key>
<integer>3</integer>
 
 



Default is 5 sec.

Can someone tell me how to clone on windows 10 using clover ?

I have tried but every-time a reboot is required and i am stuck.

Is there a preferred program/method please

I have been working on this all week, I was about to spend $650 on a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. Thank you so much!

Hi Nyctophilia,
after spending days looking for a proper solution to achieve exactly what you did I stumbled across your solution.
Worked like a charm. And in addition to it I setup my D: drive as Clover boot drive hidden to the NVMe boot C: drive.

And to drive it a little further: is mirrored my previous HDD drive to the SSD - I used Macrium Reflect (free version) for that.

A million thanks - you made my day.

Unable to boot into a Windows 10 Installer USB from Clover.
Also, Clover unable to see my Macbook Air 2012 PCIE SATA SSD that has Linux installed.

My setup is using a recycled Macbook Air 2012 PCIE SATA SSD in a M.2 to PCIE adapter. It is not NVMe. I can see the drive from the Linux and Windows installer USBs, but the H61 Mobo will not allow booting to the disk after installation of the OS.

After exiting Clover, Duet loaded and saw the SSD and listed it as HDD1, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to boot into it. I selected it and continued, but it would not boot. Just a black screen. Even from the boot configuration screen, there is a boot from file option and I am able to browse the installed file system on the PCIe drive! But can’t boot from there into it.

It seems obvious that the driver for loading my SATA PCIe drive from Clover or Duet are not present on the Clover USB.

I see everywhere about NVMe drives and clover and the magical NVMe DXE driver, but what about the older SATA PCIe drives? Surely their compatibilities were addressed before the NVMes started production.

Easiest way of making Clover PCIe NVMe boot loader for BIOS without NVMe support.
I had some trouble finding the Clover program and getting it to work. So here is a MUCH easier way of doing things. No need to find or download Clover or any drivers.
The Clover program and drivers are already on the attached file. Actually copied twice in the directory suggested and the root directory 2 times for the
NMVe and XHCI drivers. The ONLY file needed is the attached file and WinRAR if you don’t already have it installed.

Quick version - unRAR the attached file to a blank USB drive and run.

More detailed version.
Start with a blank USB Flash drive 32M (yes Meg not Gig) or larger, 16M may work since the total files are 14.3M but I haven’t tested a USB smaller than 32M.
If not empty then format the USB drive.
Extract the file Clover NVMe Loader.rar to the drive using WinRAR.
Power down and add the PCIe NVMe card or slot if needed.
Reboot and set the USB drive as the boot drive in BIOS.
It will show several drives if many are attached. It is easiest to unplug all hard drives except the boot drive.
If you leave other attached drives you may have to try different boot drives using the arrow key when Clover starts.
After that Clover will run using that same drive as boot, so never change it unless you needed.

It works great on my Asrock Z77 Pro 4 Motherboard with Samsung 960 EVO PCI NMVe for a year now ! 3200MB reads and about 1700MB writes.

Clover NVMe Loader.rar (5.87 MB)

@Tony54 :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!

Since your contribution matches better this already existing thread about the “Clover-EFI Bootloader Method”, I have moved it here.

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

Great stuff and thank you to everyone involved in this whole journey!

I have an Asus A88X-PRO and the wife got fed up with the noise coming from the HDD so i got permission to invest in a new hard drive … so why not the 512GB Samsung NVMe 970 Pro SSD. I took out the HDD, the bulky HDD racking and connected the SSD via the appropriate adapter and then my journey began to finding a solution as to why my bios wouldn’t see the drive and why the windows boot media could see it but wouldn’t install to it.

Without finding an answer i began to price up buying a new motherboard, a new processor (my AMD FM2+ setup doesn’t have a mobo available that is NVMe compatible or has an M2 port) and then the price of compatible RAM … then i discovered this forum. I toyed with the thought of trying the modified BIOS method at the risk of destroying the mobo and then i discovered this thread!

I cant thank you guys enough! Although initially, using the link for the Clover, i couldn’t find the NVMe files to copy over - i don’t think they exist in the version of Clover that is currently at the link. Then Tony54’s post came into play and i simply copied his attachment and followed his instruction. Now i’m booting to my SSD and enjoy a clean installation of Windows on it at fantastic speeds.

One thing that i am seeing during boot, just before the Clover magic happens, i get a message saying 'An operating system wasn’t found. Try disconnecting any drives that don’t contain an operating system. Press any key to restart’

When i press a key it boots into clover and then onto my SSD so its fine, i’m just trying to find a solution to bypass that initial message so when i turn on my computer it just boots through Clover without me needing to press a key in reaction to that message.

Does anyone else get this message too?

I’ve solved my own problem within a minute of writing the previous post! My boot sequence was USB device, DVD-Drive, UEFI USB device (same as the first USB but UEFI). By moving the UEFI version to the front of the boot sequence it goes straight into Clover without that message.

First of all, I have to thank you both to Nyctophilia and Fernando for the post regarding NVMe and UEFI.

I was stupid enough not check that NVMe was not supported in my laptop SVP1322C5E (Sony Vaio Pro 13) and I’ve bought an NVMe Samsung 970 Evo SSD to replace my original AHCI SSD Samsung XP941. My AMI firmware supports UEFI (Aptio V2.2) but AMI’a service —I think for me, in Spain, it is located at Germany, isn’t it?— didn’t flick an eye and leave in the mud.

I just wanted to install Windows 10 on SVP132 using the 970, and I needed to boot it on UEFI. I could “see” the 970 from the flash drive I used for installing Win 10, but I was not able to boot from the SSD drive until I learn this method (and others in Fernando’s post) and I gained a little knowledge thanks to they unselfish advice.

So, undeservedly lucky as I was to come across with this post, I’ve followed the post and I can boot and use windows in the SSD I’ve bought thanks to you. Massive thank you.

my question now is: Could it be possible to use the SD card of my laptop to install Clover to boot in order to get rid of the USB, which protrudes a bit and occupies a USB bay?is

For what I read should you have an SDCard reader that is connected as a USB, very usual in desktops, I’ve read it might work. But my laptop SD card reader is connected by another interface to the laptop’s motherboard. For starters, BDU utility doesn’t allow this prima facie.

if yes, is there any information available. In case it is not possible I’d like to know why; and if the answer is not available but could be possible, I’d appreciate any advice about what I could do to implement it

@rikelmaker

Try making the SD-Card bootable (if possible), then restart the laptop and have a look in BIOS/UEFI, if the card is available for booting from.
If not, no chanche.

I can confirm the latest BDU does not install a Cloverstick with a NvmExpressDxe-64.efi at

\EFI\CLOVER\drivers-Off\drivers64\NvmExpressDxe-64.efi (as in original post)

but at

\EFI\CLOVER\drivers-Off\drivers64UEFI\NvmExpressDxe-64.efi

@Tony54 : I downloaded your attachment several times, but my winrar says it’s a corrupted file. Could you upload a new version or let us know why this happens? Thanks.

@phusg - maybe you needed rar5 compression extraction or something? Downloaded and extracted fine for me here, mirror in zip instead of rar - https://nofile.io/f/a0PVF7xDsnk/Tony54+C…NVMe+Loader.zip

Hello everyone.
First of all thank all the information that you share, kept me entertained a whole week.
Unfortunately without success…
I chose to follow this guide because I do not want to modify the bios.

I followed the guide and I can not get my laptop to detect my new SSD. Neither the bios nor the windows installer

My laptop is an ASUS ROG GL552VW-DM464T and my disk is a Samsung EVO 970 500gb NVME.

Can someone please guide me?

This is my laptop:

Operating System
Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 6700HQ @ 2.60GHz 47 °C
Skylake 14nm Technology
RAM
12,0GB Dual-Channel Unknown @ 1064MHz (15-15-15-36)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. GL552VW (U3E1)
Graphics
Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 530 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (ASUStek Computer Inc) 49 °C
ForceWare version: 359.46
SLI Disabled
Storage
931GB Hitachi HGST HTS721010A9E630 (SATA ) 40 °C
7GB General UDisk USB Device (USB )
Optical Drives
Slimtype DVD A DA8A6SH
Audio
Conexant SmartAudio HD

PS: Sorry for my English.

Regards,

Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350 AMD Dual Core E350 Series Mainboard . l had this APU motherboard lying around ,so using PCI-E adapter and nvme bought from AliExpress decided to give Clover a try. I was not expecting a result but was pleasantly surprised when,on second attempt,Clover recognised windows installation and installed Windows 10. I placed driver in Uefi folder and just edited boot time delay to 3 seconds. It has speeded up system dramatically baring in mind it was always bad performing setup originally. Thanks

Hello I want to contribute with my build as I was able to run my NVME evo on my Desktop
Equipment; Asus B85m-g LGA 1150, 4th Gen core i5, 2x8gig memory sticks, my board has no m.2 slot onboard.

I wanted to load a new; Evo 960 m.2 with mKEY 250gig using a generic m.2 to PCIe 4x adaptor card.

I. Physical problems solved:
1. I bought a generic m.2 to PCIe 4x adaptor card from a China mail order company for $15 shipped.
2. Almost all of the adaptors have PCIe4X cards and I only have a PCI 1x slot to spare on my mobo.
3. Following some tutorials online, I cut the extra legs off the PCI adaptor. Leaving me with only 7 pins on the data side.


4, After much cutting and filing, I then slipped the adaptor into my mob’s PCIe 1x slot. No smoke so far so everything was okay.
5. I then turned off the PC loaded the Evo m.2 on the PCI adaptor and inserted the adaptor into the mobo slot.
5. Without a hitch PC turned on, booted normally not my current windows 10 installation. Win 10 saw the m.2 and without a hitch I formatted it and used it as a data drive for a while and it worked properly. NOTE that at this point I was using my old INTEL SSD with windows 10 as my primary boot disk
6. But. like most people here, i wanted to use the evo as a bootdisk so…

WARNING: don’t cut the card and even after cutting it don’t stick it into your board, UNLESS you are prepared to fry your board, brick your mobo, burn something, injure yourself or suffer some form of injury or loss.

II. Software problems somewhat solved.
1. To prepare the NVEM as my primary windows 10 bootdisk, while piggybacking on the PCIE adaptor, I did the following settings on my BIOS;
a. Load defaults
b. changed boot disk to UEFI "USB CLOVER DISK"
c. changed some settings on the mobo BIOS




2. I then booted into the clover USB.
- To prepare the clover USB Bootdisk, I just formatted the USB to FAT 32 and dragged TONY54’s files into it and the USB was ready. Thank you Tony54 for that. BTW I used an 8 gig USB
3. I then went into the clover menu to set it to boot into UEFI DVD. My Windows 10 disk was in the DVD drive. I planned to load windows using my Win10 DVD.
4. Who you load into the windows installation procedure go through all the normal procedures up to the point where you are asked to choose the DISK where you will install your windows.
5. In the windows install page where you are being ask to choose what disk to load windows on to, press SHIFT+F12, this will open the command prompt.
6. Use diskpart to prepare the disk for GPT, you can use the first part of this guide; https://youtu.be/kKtkizioHRs, but note that I formatted my drive using NTFS instead of FAT 32 as used in the tutorial.
6. I then loaded windows 10 in the normal fashion
7. On the first reboot intercept the Clover boot sequence. Choose the tab where windows will boot in the NVME. In your case there might be several Hard disk choices, choose the first one and work your way from there until you find the harddrive/partition where you loaded your windows.
8. Windows will restart several times, just click okay. cI chose express settings.
8. Windows loaded, I now run windows normally except for some hiccup below.

Update
1. I now boot from the clover installation on my internal SATA3 internal hard drive. I made a small 100MB partition on my hard drive and formatted it with FAT32. I then copied all the files in my Clover USB boot disk (which previously worked). I edited the config.plist on the UEFI partition on the Hard disk and changed all USB entries into HDD, now I boot through the clover boot disk on my hard drive. The USB Clover is being kept for emergency , in case the hard drive fails in the future. I can’t say the HDD boot is faster that the USB boot disk, its just that I feel more comfortable that my boot disk is not dangling form the outside of my PC.
2. I also installed a PCIe 1X to 16X riser (ribbon type). What it dos is I insert the PCIe 1x on the mother board and the other end is a PCIe 16x slot. Often the extra PCIe 1x slot where we install the m.2 is beside the graphics card. Using the extension/riser I was able to move the m.2 ssd far away from the graphics card so the heat of the graphics card reach and affect the ssd.


Thanks to all

Thanks for that. Finally got my Kingston K1000 flying on my 11 year old Dell Precision T7400 PC :slight_smile:

Haven’t managed to find a way to get clover to boot windows automatically, which I’d like to hear if possible, as Clover boots much faster than the DUET I’m now using. Had many problems making a DUET bootdisk, for full details see my DUET REFIND thread post here [Guide] NVMe-boot for systems with legacy BIOS and older-UEFI (DUET-REFIND) (24)

Check that post for how to not have to reinstall windows when migrating to nvme on legacy bios!

Re rar5 compression: I didn’t realise there were newer versions of compression algorithms even being made (trading backwards-compatibility and for a few percent smaller files doesn’t make much sense to me).

After upgrading my 6 year old winrar 4.10 to the latest version I could unpack. Uninstalling the old version surprisingly cleared up 10GB of drive space, even though I regularly use windows disk cleanup also on the tmp drive.


You have to modify the file config.plist (ascii-editor):

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<key>DefaultLoader</key>
<string>\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi</string>
<key>DefaultVolume</key>
<string>EFI</string>
 
 


you can modify the time CLOVER waits to boot:

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<key>Timeout</key>
<integer>3</integer>