I have a Gigabyte B660 DS3H DDR4 motherboard and recently added a Kingston NV3 M.2 NVMe SSD to an existing computer. The system still boots normally from my old SSD, and Windows recognizes the new M.2 drive for storing files and installing programs. However, I can't select it as a boot drive. I've tried changing BIOS settings, including toggling VMD and switching CSM between UEFI and Legacy, but nothing has helped. What do I need to do to boot from the new M.2 drive?
3 Answers
Since the old SSD boots and the operating system recognizes the NVMe drive, the M.2 is probably installed and functioning correctly. The issue is likely that it has no bootable operating system or bootloader. Clone the old SSD with a disk-cloning tool, or install Windows fresh to the Kingston drive. Afterward, set Windows Boot Manager for the Kingston SSD as the first UEFI boot option.
Is Windows actually installed on the Kingston drive? A newly added SSD is normally blank, so the computer cannot boot from it just because the BIOS detects it. You would need to perform a clean Windows installation on the M.2 or clone the existing system drive to it, then select the correct Windows Boot Manager entry in the UEFI boot menu.
Before changing more BIOS options, check whether the drive appears under storage information rather than only under the boot list. Empty drives often appear there but not as boot choices. A drive generally becomes selectable as a boot device only after it contains a valid operating system and EFI boot partition.
The computer already boots from my old SSD. I only added the M.2, and Windows can see it and let me save files to it, so I haven't installed or cloned the operating system onto it yet.