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

uhm but I don’t understand one thing: Have I every time to use flash drive (usb in my case) with clever to boot windows from nvme drive?

Ok so I would like to try this method with a 970 evo on my Z600. I have seen others on this thread have had success with the Z800, which should be the same as the z600, but did not mention the model of SSD he was using. I have read on other forums that the model makes a huge difference, and only sm951, 950 pro, and hyper x predator will work on the old ZX00 models. I am wondering if this boot method changes that, and if I can use a more modern SSD like the 970 evo. Any insight would be awesome thank you!!!

@MikeyLikesiT :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!

I have removed your second quite similar contribution, which you had posted into the not matching “Storage Drivers” Sub-Forum.
Hopefully you will get help within this thread.

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

@Dr_Wizard How the heck did you get the x5690’s running on your z600!? Those are the chips I originally wanted but everything I read stated that the z600 was only compatible with chips up to 95w, making the x5675 and x5672 the two fastest chips for the model, so I went with the x5675’s. If dual x5690’s are possible that is amazing.





I am confused as to why windows 7 was necessary for this. Couldn’t you have just flashed a USB to boot and install windows 10 from legacy BIOS onto the SSD, and then clone that onto the NVME, and finally convert that to GPT? It seems like an extra unnecessary step. I am going to be attempting to do essentially the same thing on a z600. I cannot get clover to load my windows 10 install media either; it sees it, but will not load it. I already have windows 10 with all of my apps configured the way I would like on an 860 evo in my z600. I am hoping I can simply clone that to the 970 evo nvme, convert to GPT and then boot that from clover bootloader. Am i missing something?

Helping with this guide and this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxfkwgxLL2c I did workable booting with Clover USB with Samsung 970 Evo with I-TEC PCI-E 2x M.2 Card on motherboard Asus P5QPro with Windows 7 x64!

Hi @Rampage #236 and @dividedattention #240
The problem is BDU file! it points to "DVD" after extracting to usb. It starts to look for windows installation disc from DVD drive. You have to use command to select to your usb installation. Read my post at #211
Hope this help.

Big big thanks to Nyctophilia and everyone here with useful inputs. With all your helps, I can now boot with NVMe drive on my Dell T5600. Never dream of such a smooth feelings when operating on this old machine. Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU ALL!!!

Hi huys , I’ve created a clover section to my ssd, everything works just fine untill i try to load windows from usb stick, it gives a boot0 error. I’ve tried 4 different win10 versions. (this is the one of them that i’ve installed to a drive and using now.)

I

Hello!
I have a Gigabyte H97 which boot only on nvme with CSM disabled. (I wish i knew it before)

I am trying to install Windows 7, thus i need to enable CSM (and can not boot on the pci nvme)

I followed the instructions on page 1. First i got a Aptio error something, fixed (i think) by replacing "OsxAptioFixDrv-64.efi" by "AptioMemoryFix-64.efi". Now Clover start and show my USB with the EFI Windows install, but after the "Press any key to launch the installation", i am stuck on a black page with a cursor blinking (or a black page).
Same think in Legacy mode.

I made the boot device with Rufus (and it is booting normaly directly from the bios).

Any idea ?
(i will try to burn a Win7 DVD asap)

It works with a regular Win 7 SP1 CD ! Best day of my life , i was so desesperate. Just F6’ed the intel drivers.
My Optane 900p will replace my fierce Raptors’ raid.

I will try to make the Windows USB image with something else than Rufus, but well the win updates install so fast on the ssd… maybe it is not necessary to use a pre-updated windows.

I can’t believe i found such an odd solution :slight_smile: I need to replace my old sushi usb key with something slicker for Clover.

Thanks to Nyctophilia!

Well, I’m reporting success with old Asus M4A87TD EVO board (non-UEFI one, totally legacy!) and AMD Phenom II X6 1055T processor. Drive is Adata M.2 2280 PCIe 240GB with Kingshare NVMe M2 to PCI-e adapter.
I used BDU to make flash drive with Clover. It did not work first time. I re-flashed it 2nd time, but selected to download latest version of clover in BDU.
No need to get to shell and load anything.
I ran windows installation from selecting file to load from windows installation flash drive. At that moment no any other USB was connected. even no USB mouse. Installed windows using keyboard.
After installation NVMe drive appeared.

The automatic boot trick did not work for me as directory structure in Clover disk differs.


I wonder if anybody has successfully added Linux USB drive to Clover menu? What driver to copy?

Hello Nyctophilia and Fernando

I am a new user on this forum and wanted to thank you immensely for this guide. I am so happy to have found your form. I studied all the posts here and happy to report that as of today I am able to now boot of a Samsung 970 Pro nvme (pci card) on a Supermicro hyper server with dual xeons and Win 10 64 bit.
The only issue I ran into was getting a Clover version that booted on my server. I tried several recent versions to no avail and eventually found a version that was compatible from 2015. I installed Win 10 pro and after booting in Clover, it selected the default Microsoft EFI boot loader and after installing the latest Samsung driver I am getting in Crystal disk mark: 3568.5 (READ) and 2346.8 (WRITE). I am also a mac user and plan to add another another 970 nvme for installing the macos and ultimately have a dual booting win10 and mac os box. The one thing I am concerned about and need your advice. Is it better to remove the existing 970 with windows 10 out of the computer when installing the macos on the second 970? In addition I plan to eventually install a Linux distro like centos and wondering if Clover can support multiple operating systems specially since Windows has a habit of corrupting drives that contain different OS?

Hello, i’m trying to install win 10 on nvme drive inserted over m.2 to pcie.I succeed to setup Clover,and he sees usb with installation files and nvme drive, but when win 10 installation starts and reach destination drive dialog, there i can select nvme drive, but installation says i cannot install on this drive because its not supported as bootable hardware.Is there any solution for this ?

Hello tomasevic,

It appears that perhaps the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi is not installed in your Clover boot usb. Did you follow the instructions in this thread to copy it over to the boot usb?

I followed everything step by step, but when dialog shows where i need to select drive for win 10 installation, win 10 setup gives me notice that drive which i selected is not supported for booting. Anyway, i find solution, by accident.I tried DUET tutorial, but with no success, so i came back to CLover tutorial, recreate my usb stick with BDU, and BDU says there is http error downloading CLOVER, i qucikly find solution for that in BDU configuration, newest version of CLOVER then was installed on usb stick.After that i tried to start win 10 setup but with no succes, so i was desperate and i tried manualy to start win 10 setup through efi shell, and setup started, and there was no message that my NVMe drive is not bootable hardware,must notice this that i did not copied nvme efi drivers in folders where tutorial says it need to be.After setup copied neccesary files computer rebooted, after reboot Clover did not see nvme as boot option, i go back to usb stick and copied nvme efi drivers to folder where it should be.After that Clover in boot menu sees new Win installation, so i can continue further.Strange huh…

Notice:
MoBo is Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3HP Bios ver. F2

UEFI only - selection for boot

I have a Dell T7400 Workstation and a Samsung 970 Evo 500GB and using this method I can successfully boot to Windows 10.
However, for the one of the applications I need to copy files to a floppy disk. The floppy drive works perfectly.
When I boot from Clover, in Device Manager under "Floppy drive controllers" there is a "Standard floppy disk controller" but the "Floppy disk drives" section is missing.
The drive does not appear in Windows Explorer. How do I get a floppy drive to work under Clover?

Floppy drive should be visible in Windows regardless of Clover.
Check, if you didn’t flipped data ribbon on one of the ends (and if 1,44MB[?] floppy is enabled in BIOS).
Also, does floppy drive have a letter assigned to it ?

@agentx007
When I do a standard MBR boot from HDD the floppy works and appears as drive A:
So it it not a problem with BIOS settings or ribbon connector.
The “Floppy disk drives” entry appears normally in device manager
https://www.use.com/Ohs14

When I do a Clover USB UEFI boot to NVMe, the “Floppy disk drives” entry does not appear in device manager
https://www.use.com/Ohs16

So it does seem that the issue is with Clover.

Hi,
Thanks for this tutorial I tried to follow, but without any success…
Actually, the system can’t boot off my Win8.1 installation stick.
I get the following error message.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QxD_tlc…iew?usp=sharing (sorry I can’t get the image displayed directly)

Any idea of what has gone wrong ?

Btw, I don’t think it is related to this but the NvmExpressDxe-64.efi path on the Clover boot drive is not the one indicated in the tutorial.
I found the file in \EFI\CLOVER\drivers-Off\drivers64UEFI\ instead of \EFI\CLOVER\drivers-Off\drivers64\ (Clover version r4862)…
I copy/pasted it at the indicated path anyway.