Booting Win10 on a BIOS only machine from an NMVe drive

Software & Operating Systems Windows
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Hey folks, I’m planning on doing an NVMe upgrade on my HP Z800 workstation.

I have several HBA’s in the machine, and the BIOS can see the disks attached to both them and the onboard SAS and SATA headers (it has both)

However I wish upgrade the nuts out of this machine, and I would like to have a large NVMe drive powering it. Max the RAM and put the fastest/highest core count processors in it (dual socket)

I haven’t tried an NVMe drive in it yet, as I only have the one and it’s currently in my laptop that I’m using now, however I would like to get the appropriate NVMe to PCIe adaptor, based on the discussion that hopefully follows this post.

I’ve tinkered with the bootloader that Windows uses many times, and I know how to use the various BCD tools out there on the internet, and my plan is this, deploy by imaging the .ESD file to the drive and using a USB drive to host the bootloader, using the aforementioned tools to point the BCD store at the NVMe drive.

I am unsure as to whether the BIOS(not EFI) bootloader will be able to either see and boot from the NMVe drive, or be able to load appropriate boot time drivers applicable (I know that you can see and use NVMe drives in BIOS booting Windows, but as only a storage medium, not boot), I’m aware that the UEFI helps the process along and allows the drive to be used in that manner.

Any input you have on this is highly appreciated :slight_smile:

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there is lots of ways of doing this. the bootloader is the least invasive and works well.

you can usually modify the BIOS as well but if your board has no UEFI at all then i would stick with the bootloader method.

i’ve done several AM3+ boards that are UEFI but do not normally support true NVME boot by adding the NVME module to the BIOS/UEFI and using a PCIE to NVME adapter. works well and has a noticeable performance boost over SATA.

Samsung also makes a NVME drive that boots over the HOST/HBA protocol and it is known to natively work in a lot of mainboards that don’t natively support NVME boot. i don’t remember which model it is off hand. i think it was like the pm961 or one of those non-evo samsung drives.