Hello,
I have browsed on here for a while, got my modded drivers and tips from many of Fernano’s post. Got the better z77 raid drivers working under windows 10.
Anyhow,
I have recently acquired an ASUS Hyper m.2 x4 adapter and a Samsung 950 pro to drop into my z77 sabertooth (yes, yell at me because I put it into the bottom PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot!) to install AAA games onto, as my Raid 0 is filling up 
My Windows was installed under UEFI mode a while back, couldnt get secure boot to work, but thats a pain anyways. I installed the 950 and adapter into the bottom slot last night, changed the PCI-E mode to x4 and rebooted. Once it starts booting, it errors out, ‘cannot find boot device…yaddah yaddah’ The 950 is detected in UEFI, but my Windows Boot Manager is missing. If I pull the 950 from system, Windows Boot Manager comes back as a boot option and I can boot into Win 10. What is the deal with this? I have browsed many other forums with no info, but I know I can find answers here. Anyone have any ideas on what I need to do for this to work? (Yeah, eventually I will have a z170 or z270 board with skylake/kabylake/cannonlake/birthdaycakelake CPU, but a total system upgrade is not an option right now.)
I would/could extract driver from NVMe package and…sigh…clean install Win 10 again to 950 pro, and use my ssd raid 0 as the games only drive, if need be. The speed of the 950 wouldnt be fully utilized in that 2.0 x4 slot though, hence why just using it as a regular storage drive.
@Ace_Of_Spades :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
What lets you think, that you can boot off the Samsung 950 Pro SSD by simply inserting it? Each bootable device needs a boot sector and the BIOS entry "Windows Boot Manager" stands for all disk drives, which have an UEFI mode boot sector and a GUIMode Partition Table.
If you want to boot off the Samsung 950 Pro, you should unplug all other disk drives, prepare a bootable USB Flash Drive containing an UEFI mode Win10 image by using a tool like Rufus and install the OS in UEFI mode.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Hello again,
No, I am still trying to boot off of my SSD RAID into windows to load the NVMe driver to use the 950 Pro as a regular drive. WIth teh 950 in the bottom slot and still trying to boot off ot the SSD’s, it will not work, the Windows Boot Manager is no longer an option in UEFI. Is there somehting I have to do to make it work inside of UEFI?
This should work, according to these steps, to use my 950 Pro as a regular storage drive:
It is no problem to get a PCIe or M.2 connected NVMe SSD working with any Intel Chipset system from 6-Series up, if
a) it has been designed for the storage of data (as drive D:, E: etc.) and
b) an appropriate NVMe driver is present within the Operating System (either natively or loaded/integrated)
The thing is, with the 950 plugged into the bottom slot PCI-E 2.0 set to run at x4 speeds, the computer cannot access the known good windows boot manager that is sitting on my SSD Raid 0. If I pull the samsung 950 pro out, the Mushkin Raid 0 boots normally. I am stuck at the spot of figuring out how to load the NVMe driver into the operating system when my computer will not boot! I cannot load the driver without the 950 pro present…unless you know of a work around?
Maybe the PCIe lanes are shared and not completely available, if all your disk drives are attached.
I cannot really understand why you don’t install the OS onto the NVMe in UEFI mode (provided, that the required NVMe EFI module is present or will be inserted into the BIOS). This solution would be far better and safer than a bootable HDD/SSD RAID0 array.
It is strange, as UEFI sees the device present, it just knocks my working Windows 10 Boot Manager out of the boot order. I have no idea why. The only other device I have plugged in is the sound card, which is controlled by the z77 chip. I assume the 2.0 x4 slot is also. I can pull my sound card tomorrow when I get home from work to see if there are any changes. Its driving me crazy that a simple hardware and driver install for a storage device is being so difficult.
IT MAY BE THAT ONLY 16 Lanes are shared by CPU, and 16 of mine are being used by graphics card? I am looking into this, and will check it out tomorrow.
Second edit
Reading through this thread I take it you have a Sabertooth Z77 board. Your graphics cards should go in the 2nd and 4th slot, with one card you have 3.0 x16, with 2 cards you have 3.0 x8 /x8, it splits the 3.0 lanes.
All other slots are 2.0 slots/lanes and do not effect the 3.0 lanes. The small x1 slots have 2.0 x1 lane to work with, your 2.0 x16 slot has 4 lanes to work with.
So it looks like PCI-E 2.0 doesnt mess with the 3.0. still baffled.
This is a pic on how the lanes are broken out, currently the 950 is plugged into the x4 slot, a sound card is in a x1 slot, leaving 3 lanes free from the z77 chip. Can the NVMe not run over the chip? Does it have to be directly off of the CPU lanes?
Well, this sucks…THIS link explains more in detail, and may be my issue. might plop it into the second PCI-E 3.0 slot and force my GPU into x8 mode and see if it works that way. Such a pain! But we will get down to this!
https://www.techpowerup.com/163886/third…ivy-bridge?cp=1
Ok, so I have been super busy, last minute things around house for kids birthday, taking Net+ test (passed today!)
I got some time with the m.2 drive. I forced installed the driver for the 950 pro. Good so far.
Second, went into the UEFI CSM options, started checking things off, turning legacy options off, forcing UEFI mode only, and it works…
Guess I just needed to relax, put my mind at east, have a beer, and work on the PC…lol
@Ace_Of_Spades :
Thanks for your final report. It is fine, that you obviously were able to solve your problem by changing the BIOS settings within the "BOOT" section.
So I conclude, that you can add the prefix "[SOLVED]" to the thread title.