PCIe samsung 970 EVO not recognized while installing Win 10

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@grysql wrote:
My computer is a Dell T7610, SMBIOS 2.7, BIOS A17, Win10 Build 16299,

1. Your method of installing Win10 and the BIOS settings are what worked for my Samsung 950 Pro and it is now my Boot drive.

2. However, when I tried the exact same procedure with a newer Samsung 960 Pro it would not Boot, it's there as storage, Samsung Magician sees it, I can clone it, it shows in Disk Management and Device Manager - it just won't act as a Boot drive.

3. To be sure, I have tried again following your instructions using my Dell Interposer card and a ‘raw’ Samsung 960 M.2 SSD for a clean install of Win 10 Pro.

4. I continued the Win10 install, the 960 is seen as proper size with only one partition.

 

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1. Good. This means your steps are correct and the hardware is working. If changing ONLY the PCIe/NVMe-SSD, it should work again.

2. Remember, when trying with a different PCIe/NVMe-SSD, all other drives/SSDs should be removed and/or disconnected. 

a. Easier for installer to find desired destination (there is only one)
b. There is no chance any other drive can be deemed "Windows Boot Manager" boot drive

3. I know what PCIe Addin-cards are (that hold M.2/PCIe/NVMe-SSD's). However, I have never actually touched one. However, it should not be a problem (since you said you used it with the Samsung 950 Pro and it worked).

4. This step. At this point, where you are selecting the destination for the install ... it should say "UnPartitioned Space". There should NOT be a partition already.

Many thanks for the help!

1. Agreed, if it worked with a Samsung 950 it ought to work with a Samsung 960 - but it hasn't so far. 

2.  Yes, only one hard drive was in the computer, the 960 Pro.  It showed up and was partitioned and the Win10 Install proceeded until a restart was initiated, at which point the 'Alert, no hard drive' screen popped up and the install would not continue.  Somewhere between the Install restart and the next black window things went foul.

3. I have used 3 different interposer (add-in) PCIe cards, two worked properly as a boot enabled card.  They are not all the same. I've tried the 2 good ones with the 960 with the same results, no boot.  I've cloned the bootable 950 to the 960, no boot with either card.  (The clones were as exact as software can make them)

4. When I say 'only one partition' I meant one Unpartitioned space.  Win10 did all the partitioning during the initial install.  What you see in the Disk Management picture was done at that time.

Edit:  Just cleaned the 960 and did another Media Install and on the initial Install restart it popped to the black 'No hard drive' window again.  This time I ran the F5 diagnostics (with only the 960 in place) and the first thing that showed up in Diagnostics was a Warning window with the message 'No hard drive detected, or disk controller not supported'. 

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@grysql wrote:

Many thanks for the help!

1. Agreed, if it worked with a Samsung 950 it ought to work with a Samsung 960 - but it hasn't so far. 

2.  Yes, only one hard drive was in the computer, the 960 Pro.  It showed up and was partitioned and the Win10 Install proceeded until a restart was initiated, at which point the 'Alert, no hard drive' screen popped up and the install would not continue.  Somewhere between the Install restart and the next black window things went foul.

3. I have used 3 different interposer (add-in) PCIe cards, two worked properly as a boot enabled card.  They are not all the same. I've tried the 2 good ones with the 960 with the same results, no boot.  I've cloned the bootable 950 to the 960, no boot with either card.  (The clones were as exact as software can make them)

4. When I say 'only one partition' I meant one Unpartitioned space.  Win10 did all the partitioning during the initial install.  What you see in the Disk Management picture was done at that time.

5. This time I ran the F5 diagnostics (with only the 960 in place) and the first thing that showed up in Diagnostics was a Warning window with the message 'No hard drive detected, or disk controller not supported'. 

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1. If you are using a USB drive created with the microsoft.com Media Creation Tool, you can leave SecureBoot Enabled. It is an authorized BootKit.

2. Good

3. Well, use a known good/tested one.

4. OK

5. Strange. Do you think if might just be a bad SSD? Do you have another machine you could test it in?

We still don't know if it is Windows or the SSD itself. However, it would not hurt to check for a SSD firmware upgrade just in case.

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@Tesla1856 wrote

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1. If you are using a USB drive created with the microsoft.com Media Creation Tool, you can leave SecureBoot Enabled. It is an authorized BootKit.

2. Good

3. Well, use a known good/tested one.

4. OK

5. Strange. Do you think if might just be a bad SSD? Do you have another machine you could test it in?

We still don't know if it is Windows or the SSD itself. However, it would not hurt to check for a SSD firmware upgrade just in case.

 

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Just tried the known good procedure with Secure Boot enabled, no joy. 

I use the same interposer cards that work with the 950 Pro, makes zero difference when using the 960, it won't boot with the same card as the 950 uses to boot with.  Strange is right. 

As far as the 960's condition goes, it shows as healthy in Disk Management, as seen in the above picture.  Samsung's Magician software shows it with very low hours, good condition and the firmware is up to date.

Like Hassan, the OP of this thread, I am not the only member of this forum that has run into setup issues with PCIe M.2 SSD's.  One would hope that the same procedure would work for all M.2's and interposer cards, especially when Dell sells and ships their own version interposer cards and computers with these cards that are setup and running. My Dell interposer card works easily with a 950 Pro M.2 but later model Samsung SSD's and booting remain a mystery for many of us.

Well, I suppose Dell and Samsung should look into this.

I can tell you I have a Samsung PM-961 512gb SSD (M.2 PCIe NVMe) in my Aurora-R6 and it works fine.

I'm sure you checked this, but just in case ... after a good install attempt ... does the BIOS show "Windows Boot Manager" as boot Priority #1?

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@Tesla1856 wrote:

Well, I suppose Dell and Samsung should look into this.

I can tell you I have a Samsung PM-961 512gb SSD (M.2 PCIe NVMe) in my Aurora-R6 and it works fine.

I'm sure you checked this, but just in case ... after a good install attempt ... does the BIOS show "Windows Boot Manager" as boot Priority #1?

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I thank you for your effort here, my Samsung 950 Pro works great too.  Maybe there is still some time for me to get in a little blast of Wreckfest! 

Yep, WinBootMgr is #1 priority in the BIOS.  I'll keep trying some tricks, maybe copy the boot partition from the 950 to the equivalent partition on the 960 and see what explodes, haha.  Not very tidy but at this point why not?

I am reading your last discussion throughly and compare with what I did before, so that, I can get some conclusion on how to overcome this issue. I am trying to build the big picture of this issue and identify what are possible causes for these drives not getting detected.

Thanks for your discussion.

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@grysql wrote:

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@Tesla1856 wrote:

Well, I suppose Dell and Samsung should look into this.

I can tell you I have a Samsung PM-961 512gb SSD (M.2 PCIe NVMe) in my Aurora-R6 and it works fine.

I'm sure you checked this, but just in case ... after a good install attempt ... does the BIOS show "Windows Boot Manager" as boot Priority #1?

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I thank you for your effort here, my Samsung 950 Pro works great too.  Maybe there is still some time for me to get in a little blast of Wreckfest! 

Yep, WinBootMgr is #1 priority in the BIOS.  I'll keep trying some tricks, maybe copy the boot partition from the 950 to the equivalent partition on the 960 and see what explodes, haha.  Not very tidy but at this point why not?

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Right.

It seems that either due to new Windows v1803 or more likely due to the new controller in 960-Pro, something is not getting written to the SSD properly. Maybe a wrong signature or pointer.

I would suggest trying ...

Doing the install the way we know works on the 950. After it fails to boot, use the Windows Recovery Console to repair the boot sector so that Windows Boot Manager works properly (as it should).

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@Tesla1856 wrote:

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Right.

It seems that either due to new Windows v1803 or more likely due to the new controller in 960-Pro, something is not getting written to the SSD properly. Maybe a wrong signature or pointer.

I would suggest trying ...

Doing the install the way we know works on the 950. After it fails to boot, use the Windows Recovery Console to repair the boot sector so that Windows Boot Manager works properly (as it should).

 

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The 960 will not allow my Win10 Pro USB stick or a new Media Creation USB to install Win10 Pro past the 1st restart, the 'Alert: No hard drive' always stops further install procedures.  Using a Recovery Tool at this point will not recover the 960 past a certain point when a ’There was problem...' window appears and stops recovery or reset.
I went so far as to do a complete clone of the bootable 950 to the 960.  Then put the 960 in the same bootable interposer card that was booting the 950, no joy.  After that, I attempted to recover this cloned 960 to see if it could be repaired, no joy.

The Samsung 950 is 2D MLC NAND Flash, the 960/970's are 3D TLC NAND flash.  I still suspect that my T7610's SMBIOS v2.7 and the Samsung 960's Photon and the 970's Polaris on-board Controller are not compatible, even though the BIOS is in UEFI Mode.  

My Win10 Pro version is: Build 10.0.16299, Version 1709 “Fall Creators Update”/”Redstone 3”

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@grysql wrote:

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The 960 will not allow my Win10 Pro USB stick or a new Media Creation USB to install Win10 Pro past the 1st restart, the 'Alert: No hard drive' always stops further install procedures.  Using a Recovery Tool at this point will not recover the 960 past a certain point when a ’There was problem...' window appears and stops recovery or reset.
I went so far as to do a complete clone of the bootable 950 to the 960.  Then put the 960 in the same bootable interposer card that was booting the 950, no joy.  After that, I attempted to recover this cloned 960 to see if it could be repaired, no joy.

The Samsung 950 is 2D MLC NAND Flash, the 960/970's are 3D TLC NAND flash.  I still suspect that my T7610's SMBIOS v2.7 and the Samsung 960's Photon and the 970's Polaris on-board Controller are not compatible, even though the BIOS is in UEFI Mode.  

My Win10 Pro version is: Build 10.0.16299, Version 1709 “Fall Creators Update”/”Redstone 3”

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Oh course, you are right. Not sure what I was thinking. :Embarrassed:

The SSD has to properly boot itself (instead of the inserted USB Flash drive) to finish phase-2 of the install. If it could do that, it would be working already. :Smile:

Also interesting that the direct clone didn't work.

When the 950 works (and the only thing you change is the 960-SSD) it's pretty obvious that there is some kind of compatibility problem with your machine and the 960. Hard to say if ultimate fix is inside your machine or the 960-SSD (or both). Samsung and Dell would have to examine it. I would report to both. Maybe you or your company has some "influence" with one of them?

Luckily, the 950 works fine. I would be tempted to do this about now (and get back to my life):

950 C: bootable for Windows (and plenty of extra space)
960 D: Programs and whatever (and plenty of extra space)

Something like that. Or, if C: is big enough for both (Windows, all programs, with plenty of space to grow) ... just install the 960 in a different machine that needs a SSD.

Interesting problem. Sorry I could not be of more help.

I was sick in the past few days, so that I could not follow you.

However, I did some test with not hope. My final definitive conclusion is that the Samsung 970 M.2 is not recognized to the workstation as a bootable drive. This may come from one (or both) of two compatibility issues:

1. Some interposer cards are not help these SSD's to be booting drives, while other cards do.

          I found the following page usefule:

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/what-pcie-add-in-cards-can-boot-a-nvme-m-2-ssd.2498673/

2. The driver of PCIe drive is also very important to recognize the disks as bootable.

         I found that Dell is gives some such drivers on website and name them as: Toshiba ... PCIe ... dirver, Intel ... PCIe ... driver, and so on. However, nothing found for samsung drives.

as you already have some cards which can help these drives to be bootable, then, I think the remaining issue is the driver.

Thanks

Another clue that the issue should be considered Started from Dell side is that the Samsung NVMe PCIe 960 and 970 EVO SSDs are installed as a PCIe bootable drives for other motherboard manufacturers, as can be seen by simple web search.

Thanks

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@Hassan-WS wrote:

 

1. Some interposer cards are not help these SSD's to be booting drives, while other cards do.

         

2. The driver of PCIe drive is also very important to recognize the disks as bootable.

       

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1. Right. But his adapter card is tested "good" with 950-SSD.

2. Right, but the 950-SSD works. Also, this "Intel F6 Driver" you are referring to does not apply to UEFI/AHCI configuration. At least, not that I've even seen.

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@Hassan-WS wrote:

Another clue that the issue should be considered Started from Dell side is that the Samsung NVMe PCIe 960 and 970 EVO SSDs are installed as a PCIe bootable drives for other motherboard manufacturers, as can be seen by simple web search.

Thanks

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Agreed. But still, it is possible that Samsung "dropped support" for older configs. Either intentionally or accidentally. 

It's rare, but I've seen something similar once...

Many years ago, Dell tried shipping Micron SATA SSDs on some new machines (as Micron entered the SSD market). IIRC, the problem was they would not boot. They had send-out techs to swap the SSDs to different model. Many other customers just returned the machines.

That's when we truly learned that Dell doesn't actually "boot machines" and test them before they leave the factory. As you know, that is done by the customer (and they then do the Windows "First time Setup").