Hello,
I’m new to Win-Raid and having an interest in computers I was impressed by the wealth of information on your site which was right up my street.
Apologies for the long read, but I hope you find it interesting enough to stick with me.
I’m currently trying to improve my computer’s performance by adding an NVME drive as a boot disk and low and behold, my motherboard is too old to allow for this NVME to be bootable for Windows 10. That’s when I am across your site and I can see there’s hope.
The drive I would like to boot from:
Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive R/W 3200/2900MB/s (SB-RKTQ-2TB)
The drive I’m currently booting from:
476GB Intel Raid 0 Volume (RAID (SSD): These are 2 Samsung SSD Sata drives in Raid-o configuration
So what have I done so far?
1. Installed the Sabrent in motherboard through using the
glotrends PCIE NVMe Adapter Card with Full Covering Aluminium Heatsink for PC Desktop, PCIE GEN3 Full Speed (PA09-HS). The Sabrent is now visible in Windows as another storage device and I’m able to use it as normal, but not as a boot drive, my system is currently still booting from the Raid-0 as mentioned earlier.
2. I’m aware for reading your forum that my BIOS can be modded so that my Motherboard allows my Windows 10 to boot from the Sabrent disk. So having read the threads on your forum I concluded that I first would have to update my BIOS to the most recent version. My current version is F5, the most recent version is F9
3. I have tried to update my BIOS, with the help of Gigabyte support. They advised me to make a bootable USB flash drive and use this to update my BIOS, but unfortunately my Motherboard fails to boot from this USB drive, even though I have changed the boot sequence in the BIOS and have used Rufus 3-10 to build he bootable USB drive as recommended by Gigabyte support.
I’m stuck
At this point I’m hoping you can help me and chip in with trying to answer any of the following questions that you are able to:
1. I have never modded a BIOS and although I have read the relevant threads as far as I could see I’m worried that I might miss something. I would therefore be grateful if anyone could direct me to any threads or otherwise that could help me to brush up on my basics regarding the BIOS, before undertake modding?
2. Do you perhaps have an idea why my Motherboard refuses to boot from the bootable USB drive?
3. Or is what I’m trying to do not possible and should I therefore abandon this project?
I would greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have!
Looking forward to hearing from you.
My system:
Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 4770K @ 3.50GHz 69 °C
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
32.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z87X-UD4H-CF (SOCKET 0) 33 °C
Graphics
ASUS PB287Q (3840x2160@30Hz)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 (Gigabyte)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 (ASUStek Computer Inc) 50 °C
ForceWare version: 432.00
SLI Disabled
Hello, as Gigabytes suggests, the F9 version should be updated using EFIFLASH provided…and not using embedded bios utility Q-Flash.
Prepare the USB as Gigabyte suggested, considering that it should be MBR type, CSM or BIOS in RUFUS options.
Copy all the content of the bios update file to USB, it may ask to replace autoexec.bat, do not overwrite.
This USB will only boot as long as motherboard boot options are set to Legacy boot/CSM, not UEFI mode.
At the command prompt: Efiflash Z87XUD4H.F9
This mboard has dual-bios, it can take several minutes and auto reboots itself, do not interrupt the process/power AC to it.
After all done, the bios most likely is to loose her settings and defaults loaded, configure settings to your desire/needs.
Boot into OS and verify system stability and you should be fine.
I will point you now the threads for the NVMe solution
[Guide] How to get full NVMe support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS
[Guide] How to flash a modded AMI UEFI BIOS
Remember that all the operations involved presents some risks considerations. Good luck.
Hello Meatwar,
Thank you for your reply.
Will the Bios update affect my RAID–0 setup, I just want to make sure that it stays intact, just in case I need to prepare myself for a complete re–install, as the RAID–0 setup is currently my boot disk?
Thank you again and I’m very grateful for you taking the time to reply and explain.
Regards,
Well, as said before…most likely the default settings will be loaded upon the bios update, take note on ur current settings and RAID config in order
set them back as before, there is always some changes that can affect ur RAID or not, not talking of the data on them.
Its a user option of risk and u should on think in ur needs…we r talking of a Raid 0 as you know, its stripped not mirrored so…
I do suggest that prepare yourself for the all operation, bios update and NVMe mod, since after this its always advised to do a clean OS install on your Sabrent NVMe.
Hello Meatwar,
Thank you again for your reply. Just a few more queries so that I can map out a plan:
1. If I succeed in updating my BIOS, my system (Windows 10 ), might become unbootable if the RAID is badly affected (corrupted, “broken up”).
2. So if my RAID is corrupted I would have to get into the BIOS (newly flashed and updated one) to fix the RAID
3. If I can’t fix the RAID I’ll have to install Windows 10 on another disk for now and then continue with
4. Modding my BIOS so that I can boot my Windows 10 from the newly installed Sabrent
just to check that I’ve got it right.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
As we never know what tiny adjust/modifications the manufacturer has made in the bios update version, we should always considere a risk when we have/NEED/CANNOT AFFORD to STOP our stable system.
That`s ur decision to make and is not my call/guessing, on saying to u what can fail or not.
It can occur that ur RAID 0 cannot boot anymore after the bios update or ur RAID volume get corrupted trying to boot it…or nothing will happen and will boot fine as before.
The operation of updating the bios doesn’t need a bootable OS environment, so u can disconnect ur RAID disks and after the bios update, if u want and use a spare disk to temporary
install an OS in order to do the bios mod to NVMe.
So ur scenario is nearly correct and this is wot costs to a regular user u wants to get involved in this kind of operations.
I think i showed u the all picture and this is only my point of view about ur situation, good luck.
Hello Meatwar,
Thank you for your reply and yes I fully understand the risks, I just needed to double-check to make sure that I’ve got it right. I do appreciate the time your taking and I’m very grateful for that.
I have created the bootable USB as mentioned earlier in Rufus and indeed, I didn’t replace the autoexec.bat file, but in copying the newly downloaded BIOS files to the USB drive, the file was renamed autoexec(2).bat.
I just want to make sure that this is not going to cause a problem.
Alternatively, I could copy the entire folder with the new BIOS files as a separate folder onto the bootable USB drive.
What would you advise?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
@MeatWar - Thanks for jumping in to help!! 
@dsk05a - Remove your RAID drives and label then so you know which port and drive goes where when you are ready to put back, problem solved 
Just be sure to set RAID in BIOS before you connect them again
If you are wanting to move to NVME to boot from, you wont be booting from your RAID anymore anyway, you will do a clean install of Win10 onto the NVME
You will need to follow all items at #4 in the “This is what you should do” section of this guide - [Guide] How to get full NVMe support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS
Use small cheap USB 2.0 (not 3.0 device) and put BIOS on rear USB 2.0 ports (not blue)
If you continue to have issues making bootable DOS with Rufus, use this method, follow this link and then use ONLY step #1-2 ONLY, then put BIOS + EFIFlash on that USB and boot to it using F12 at startup and choose USB by name (not UEFI : USB Name)
<Request> Flagship X470 Gaming 7 Wifi Motherboard BIOS Fix
Also, since this BIOS is a bit tricky with the padding files and insertion of Full size NVME, here is NVME Mod BIOS F9 and F10b - you can Qflash to either after you have first EFIFlashed to stock F9 (ONLY after you first EFIFlash to stock F9 )
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil…919437192858895
If you only see UEFI named USB devices, then enter BIOS and change the following
BIOS Features Page >> Windows 8 Feature setting >> Set Other OS
Same page >> CSM >> Enabled/always
Then reboot and spam F12 at startup to get boot menu, then choose USB by name (not UEFI) and carry on in DOS as mentioned above
Hello,
I have downloaded MMTool 4.50.0.23, which I managed to get without having to register and followed the procedure regarding inserting the DXE file, in my case only the NvmExpressDxe_Small was accepted and I inserted it uncompressed. But when I proceeded to the next step, “Save Image As…” where I was supposed to enter a name with the extension of my source BIOS file ( in my case z87xud4hmod.f9), the MMTool saved the file as z87xud4hmod.f9.fd as the only available option (i.e extension.fd).
I wonder if this BIOS-mod will function when I’m updating my BIOS?
I have checked the modded BIOS in MMTool and the inserted DXE file seems to be in the right place.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
@dsk05a - Having to register to download MMTool???
Anyway, MMTool always saves using .fd extension, rename back to stock extension when you are done