TeraByte Unlimited

To my complete satisfaction, I have been using BIBM for many years on my current pc. Now I have plans to build a new pc with an ASUS PRIME B360M-A mainboard and a Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe SSD. Furthermore the pc may also get a regular SATA SSD or HDD.

Does anyone know if it will be possible to install BIBM (and a few boot partitions) on the M.2 NVMe SSD? Will it be possible to configure the M.2 NVMe SSD as EMBR drive? Are there any special measures I have to take?

All depends on your BIOS, if it's available as a BIOS device and
available as a boot device, you should be good to go. May require a
firmware update. If it only boots in UEFI mode, you'd need to use
BootIt UEFI and install OSes that support booting via UEFI.

On 9/29/2019 9:20 AM, AGH1965 wrote:
> To my complete satisfaction, I have been using BIBM for many years on my current pc. Now I have plans to build a new pc with an ASUS PRIME B360M-A mainboard and a Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe SSD. Furthermore the pc may also get a regular SATA SSD or HDD.
>
> Does anyone know if it will be possible to install BIBM (and a few boot partitions) on the M.2 NVMe SSD? Will it be possible to configure the M.2 NVMe SSD as EMBR drive? Are there any special measures I have to take?
>
>

AGH1965,

I have a Gigabyte B360M motherboard and a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD. BootIt UEFI works fine.

Brian K, It seems logical to me that BootIt UEFI works fine. I asked about BootIt Bare Metal though. Maybe I should switch to BootIt UEFI, but the UEFI stuff scares me a bit. Furthermore I like the EMBR so much, because I can easily prevent OS's from creating additional partitions.

Besides, the ASUS PRIME B360M-A mainboard has a possibility to switch the access to the M.2 NVMe SSD to (emulated?) SATA. I assume that using BootIt Bare Metal with EMBR won't be a problem then, but I don't want to use SATA, since it slows down the connection in comparison with true PCIE 3.0 x4.

AGH1965,

In general, BIBM works OK on a UEFI system if the system has a legacy boot option, but I don't know anything about NVMe disks.

To get what you indicated you want, you probably will have to convert your GPT disk to EMBR.

AGH1965 wrote:
> Maybe I should switch to BootIt UEFI, but the
> UEFI stuff scares me a bit.
>

AGH1965,

That is "Fear of the unknown". UEFI isn't difficult. It really is only slightly different from using Legacy/MBR. Accept the slight difference and the fear is gone. Using BIU is very similar to using BIBM. You will recall it took you ages to feel comfortable with BIBM. If you feel comfortable with BIBM then learning to use BIU will be a rapid process.



>, but I don't want to use SATA,
> since it slows down the connection in comparison with true PCIE 3.0 x4.

With MBR you might not be able to boot an OS from the M.2 NVMe SSD using PCIe. You might have to use the M.2 NVMe SSD as a secondary drive, SATA mode, running at 20% of its potential speed.

Rethink UEFI.

Brian K, you are probably right. I just started reading BIU's manual. Maybe it will give me enough confidence to make the switch. Thanks for the advice.

AGH1965, if you go with UEFI, disable CSM and enable Secure Boot in the UEFI BIOS. Make sure the Samsung NVMe is recognized in the BIOS. Don't have other drives connected at this stage.
Install BIU to the empty Samsung NVMe. This will give you two partitions ...
ESP 400 MiB
MSR 16 MiB

In BIU create a NTFS partition for your impending Win10. You don't have to do anything else except boot the Win10 media in UEFI mode and install Win10 to the partition you just created. After Win10 is installed you will find BIU has created a Boot Item for Win10. Easy.

You will also get a RE partition created for a total of 4 partitions. For backups, image all 4 partitions. This is needed if you have a drive failure.

Any questions?

Why is it important to have only the NVMe SSD connected when installing BIU?

It's just me being over-cautious to make sure BIU isn't installed on the wrong drive.

NVMe drives are usually seen by the BIOS as the last drive. I have 5 drives and my boot drive, M.2 NVMe, is Hard Drive 4. My NVMe in the PCIe adapter is Hard Drive 0. Before I added the PCIe adapter the M.2 NVMe was Hard Drive 3.

After BIU is installed you can add your other drives. Unlike MBR systems, with UEFI if you want to install a Microsoft OS on an alternate drive, you don't have to disconnect other drives.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=339