I'm having trouble getting my M.2 drive to be recognized as a bootable device on my MSI B450M-A Pro Max II motherboard. I currently have a 1TB WD HDD with Windows installed, and I've added a Lexar NM 620 256GB M.2 SSD. In the BIOS, only the HDD shows up as a UEFI boot option. I've tried switching to CSM mode, but the M.2 still doesn't appear. I removed Windows from the HDD via msconfig, but it remains visible as a boot option. The M.2 drive is formatted as GPT. Any suggestions?
1 Answer
It sounds like when you installed Windows, it utilized the EFI partition from your HDD, which is why it triggered a dual boot setup. What you probably want to do is disconnect your HDD during the Windows installation on the M.2. That way, it will create a new EFI partition on the M.2 drive and set that as the boot drive instead. If you'd rather avoid reinstalling Windows from scratch, you might also need to check your BIOS settings to see if there’s a boot order option or something similar to resolve the dual boot issue.
So, you’re saying I should format the M.2 and reinstall Windows with the HDD unplugged?