This may not help however I remember doing this by creating a USB recovery drive with the hard disk that was installed first (without the ssd installed). After that I installed the Windows OS while taking the old drive out. I remember it was a huge pain however not even close to the amount of frustration when I was trying to place Linux on the drive. I know separating the drives in all steps lead me much farther in the process of solving my issue. I wish I could be more help but I'm going off of what I can remember ~6 months ago with little to no sleep during that time. Also cloning the drive never worked. I would recommend against that route to save time. Fresh install is the best option to pursue.

Thanks for the input. I followed your same path, but when I disconnected the HDD the BIOS screen never loads. I also agree, fresh install is the way to go. I just don't know why the install dies at the very end.

So here is where I am currently. I removed the 512GB M.2 Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD drive. I bought an additional 1TB Samsung 850 Evo (Non M.2). Put it in and ran a fresh install. Failed at end of install just like the M.2 slot. Went back into the BIOS and set the ATA controller to AHCI. Install now successful on Evo.

Place the Pro back into the M.2 slot. Won't get past BIOS load screen. So the M.2 slot will not work unless the controller is set to RAID Mode period.

Go back to RAID Mode. Evo won't boot, won't repair. Remove everything but the Evo and boot to flash drive and install Windows 10 with controller set to RAID Mode. Install M.2 Pro and HDD and partition and format them as additional drives.

Apparently Dell doesn't support installing and then booting from the M.2 slot on the new Alienware Aurora R5 at this time. This is a shame because it is supported on the laptops. I've watched several videos where people successfully installed the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2

BIOS version 1.0.4

Really interested in an answer here.  In the same boat as I just got my system, and struggling to self install 950 Pro.  I know Dell sells bootable m.2 drives factory install, so seems like there should be a solution here.

I've got a slightly different symptom whereby I can't see the drive in BIOS from boot, but if I boot from USB to install Win10, it shows as an option to install to, but flags an error and says cannot install to the drive.  If this is different and I need to start a new thread let me know.

Hi,

Let's try disabling the secure boot in the BIOS and then reinstall.

Remove the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD drive, turn the system on and access the BIOS (F2) > Boot tab > Secure boot : disable it, save and exit. Then turn the system off and put the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD back and try to install again.

Let me know how it goes!

@bstacer99 Yes they do offer M.2 drives, but they are not the NVMe type that gives you up to 32GBps theoretical. They are the older 6GBps SATA III. I will say in my current config I can Install Wiindows Server 2012 R2 GUI in 57 seconds using the 950 Pro as the drive where the VHDx files are stored. But alas its not my boot drive.

<ADMIN NOTE: Non-public info removed as per TOU>

 Thank you for responding. All attempts posted have been with secure boot off. Not even possible to do the things I've done with secure boot on.

@

<ADMIN NOTE: Non-public info removed as per TOU>

If I put the 950 Pro in any configurations other than RAID Mode the computer will freeze loading the BIOS screen. I have removed the 950 and thus the GTX 1080 over 100 times in every possible configuration possible. It will not work period. It works great as an additional drive, but you cannot install Windows on it nor boot from it.

@bstacer99 One more thing after rereading. Yes I had the same behavior. When I initially put the M.2 drive in the new computer the BIOS saw it. When I went to install from flash drive the bios showed "none", yet the installer could see the drive and let me delete the previous partitions and then install....  Only to fail at the end.

1) Unistalled the drive as instructed.

2) rebooted went to BIOS, turned off Secure Boot

3) installed 950 Pro

4) Booted, went to BIOS, did not see the m.2 drive listed  (took a screenshot I can send)

5) Saved Exited BIOS, let boot, can see the drive on device Manager.  Under Properties everything looks fairly normal, though not sure if I should be looking for anything.  It is using the MS driver. (Screenshot)

6) Rebooted and let it come all the way up as during shutdown it looked like Windows was updating.

7) Rebooted and went to Boot Options, booted from USB Key.  

8) Drive showed up to install on, no errors this time.  Windows fully installs

9) It says it needs to perform a restart, tries to Boot, but comes up with Recovery Screen.  Missing file "File:\Window\system32\winload.efi"    "Error code 0x0000225" (Took another Screenshot) it auto-powered off.

10) Booted and went to BIOS, M.2 not showing in the BIOS.

11) Saved and Closed and back to the recovery Screen.

12) On the recovery screen, tried the "Different OS" Option, and selected Volume 3 (there were two options) and it finished booting, but I feel like it was booted to the Spinning drive based on Speed and Size of the drive when I went to explorer page (OS was on C: and it was much bigger than the SSD Size.

13) Rebooted - recovery screen, tried it again but this time with Volume 7, it just tried to reboot and went back to the recovery screen.

Hopefully this level of detail helps.  I'm going to leave it in this state.  Let me know what you want me to try next.

"I was able to get a different PCIe NVME drive to work well in my system"

What specific drive worked?

Quick Update.  I was able to get a different PCIe NVME drive to work well in my system so seems it is something to do with the specific Samsung 950 Drive / Aurora R5 BIOS combination not playing well together.