NVMe SSD Install on Windows 7

[Pudgie]

Hi All,

Gonna dive in and take a shot at installing a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe PCI-E 512Gb M.2 SSD on my Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 mobo (Gigabyte F22 UEFI is NVMe-compliant as well as Broadwell-E compatable) and using it as the boot drive w\ Windows 7 HP 64x SP1.

I have already acquired the MS Hotfix KB2990941 (to provide NVMe support to Win 7 SP1 32 and 64 bit) and installed the x64 version of it in the OS then have cloned the updated OS w\ hotfix on my Plextor PCI-E SSD to my Samsung 850 Pro SATAIII 512Gb SSD (after installing all recent updates and after updating my FuryX to latest Crimson 16.7.3 drivers (WHQL certified)) then have gone into the mobo UEFI and changed the boot order to the cloned OS and have booted up off it so all is well. Have already wiped the Plextor M6e BK PCI-E 512Gb M.2 SSD and it is ready to be removed.

Have already d'ld the Samsung NVMe driver vers 1.1 for the 950 Pro NVMe SSD onto my ghost SSD to install upon Windows boot up into Win 7 HP SP1 OS so that Windows can recognize & use the 950 Pro NVMe SSD then once this is done then I will clone the 850 Pro SATA SSD onto the 950 Pro NVMe PCI-E SSD using the Samsung Magician software to test it (have been using FarStone's free version of DC Clone 11) then reboot into the UEFI, change the boot order to the new NVMe SSD then see if she'll boot up.....................

The Samsung 950 Pro NVMe 512Gb PCI-E M.2 SSD is scheduled to hit my doorstep tomorrow.

Gonna later on attempt to slipstream this hotfix into my USB copy of Windows 7 HP SP1 (that I have already fixed to partition HDD\SSD for UEFI installs) so that it will also install the support for NVMe drives up front.

Wish me well!

 
 

[MADe]

why not just a fresh install?
Seems to me when dealing with newness, simplicity is best.

[Pudgie]

why not just a fresh install?
Seems to me when dealing with newness, simplicity is best.

Will need to build a slipstreamed Win 7 SP1 OS.iso w\ the MS Kb2990941 hotfix to do that as Win 7 SP1 doesn't natively support NVMe (the hotfix provides this support for Win 7 SP1) so I'm gonna try the long way around 1st as all else is already present and accounted for so all I "should" have to do is install the new NVMe SSD in my mobo's M.2 slot as the UEFI should recognize it, boot up then once in Windows after verifying that the drive can be seen (should be seen in Windows as the drive is unallocated) install the 950 Pro SSD's drivers in Windows so the OS should see the new SSD as a NVMe SSD after a reboot (have already installed the MS hotfix in Windows before I cloned it off my Plextor M6e PCI-E SSD which is occupying the M.2 slot on my mobo onto my Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD) then clone the updated OS on my 850 Pro Sata SSD onto the new NVMe SSD (which should handle all the partitioning, EFI partitioning, boot records, GPT tabling, etc) then reboot into the UEFI and reset the boot order then save and reboot............if all is good Win 7 should boot up off the NVMe SSD.

In the meantime I'm working on the 2nd remedy (which is the better method and what you have mentioned) once I can find a good 3rd party software that I can use to perform the slipstream integration so that I can build a slipstreamed .iso of my Win 7 HP SP1 OS w\ all windows updates including MS KB2990941 added, the NVMe driver added for the Samsung 950 Pro SSD (so I can skip the F6 step) AND modded to automatically partition a drive for EFI partition (for UEFI mode operation) and put it on my USB stick. I already have done this w\ the mod for EFI partition.....should just need to integrate the windows updates and NVMe driver into it once I can find the 3rd party software to do it with.

Tried to download the freeware version of RT 7 Lite this morning off the official site but kept getting a HTTP 404 error so I'm still looking.

FYI........................

[MADe]

i used a w7 disk to prepare an ssd for wxp install. I wonder if a w10 disk would recognize and prepare an nvme drive for w7. Once assigned a drive letter......

[Skuzzy]

Pudgie, I use NTLite to build all our ISO, which are then rendered to a USB flash drive.

The only issue you are going to have is trying to apply all the updates.  It makes the primary install file more than 4GB, which exceeds the FAT32 filesystem required for booting a USB flash drive.

I understand there are some ways to get around it, but none are very clean. 

[Pudgie]

i used a w7 disk to prepare an ssd for wxp install. I wonder if a w10 disk would recognize and prepare an nvme drive for w7. Once assigned a drive letter......

According to all I've read MADe, that won't work. You'll need to install the MS KB2990941 hotfix in Win 7 SP1 for Win 7 SP1 to recognize a NVMe SSD as a boot drive. As for storage no problem and no need for the hotfix. Now w\ this hotfix installed you can't do any firmware updates to the NVMe SSD so keep this in mind. Starting w\ Win 8.1 on full NVMe support is native in the OS.

Pudgie, I use NTLite to build all our ISO, which are then rendered to a USB flash drive.

The only issue you are going to have is trying to apply all the updates.  It makes the primary install file more than 4GB, which exceeds the FAT32 filesystem required for booting a USB flash drive.

I understand there are some ways to get around it, but none are very clean. 

Well if NTLite is good enough for you then it's good enough for me. Thanks ole Wise One!

Yeah I had read some stuff concerning integrating all Windows Updates but the readings that I had read to date didn't mention that tidbit about the FAT32 file system being limited to 4Gb for USB boot up.....only recommended to use a USB stick that was larger than 4Gb capacity....which I was already using a 8Gb stick as I also use this same USB stick to flash my mobo UEFI. Good thing you posted about that..........I woulda been a little pissed finding that out afterwards and having to redo it all over.........

I already have an .iso of my Win 7 HP 64x SP1 OS on it w\ the modded boot files to automatically partition a drive for UEFI during OS install so I was just wanting to add the MS hotfix to it at a minimum (adding the rest of the windows updates was icing if possible) along w\ the NVMe driver for my Samsung 950 Pro so I could skip the F6 function during a clean install of Win 7.

Gonna go get NTLite now.....................

Thanks again for the tip!

 

PS--Forgot that I had already downloaded NTLite back in May when I did the mods to the bootefi64 files......................
Man I'm REALLY getting old and forgetful.................... ....
 

[Pudgie]

Update:

Installed NTLite and inserted my USB stick.
Opened NTLite and pointed it to my USB stick and loaded my .wim files..............

Saw that my little Win 7 HP 64x SP1 disk actually has all 4 Win 7 64x SP1 OS versions on it, Basic, HP, Professional and Ultimate.............

Integrated each version image .wim w\ MS KB2990941 hotfix so all are done........easy as pie!

All went like clockwork. Remounted all images to check and all showed the hotfix as clean integration.

I skipped integrating the rest of the Windows Updates for now (didn't have the installer located anyway.....save it for later).

But I ran into a little issue when I tried to integrate the Samsung NVMe driver at this time as the driver is packaged as an .exe and NTLite don't like that so I will have to do this after the driver has been installed in Windows to pull out the .inf files to then integrate them into the .wim images.

I was also tempted to integrate the 2 registry hacks in that stops the Win 10 installs as well but this is also too easy to add into the registry after initial OS install so I backed off................for now.

Dismounted all images and shut down NTLite then ejected my USB stick.............muy bueno!

#2 backup plan is now active if #1 doesn't work, outside of NVMe driver install as it appears that Samsung packaged this driver to be installed once the NVMe SSD is installed and ID'd by driver installer in Windows. Checked Samsung's web site again for a .inf version of this NVMe driver and found only the .zip version which extracts into an .exe (driver installer).

Always somebody gotta make us work for it.............

 

[Pudgie]

Hi Skuzzy,

I got to thinking about this some more and so I went out and found this web site to check to see if there was a Windows reference NVMe driver available to be used w\ Win 7 and it appears that such a driver does exist...............

http://downloads.openfabrics.org/Windows/v3.2/

Is the actual Windows NVMe reference driver the 1 listed for Win 7-or-Svr 2008 R2-or-HPC Edition?
I already noted that the Windows Microsoft Inbox NVMe driver for Win 7 is essentially the MS Kb2990941 hotfix that I've already installed.

If so, is this driver worth the time to integrate into my Win 7 .iso images as it is an open source driver?
Mainly for extended NVMe compatibility reasoning..........I noted that Samsung was 1 of the co-sponsors and so thought that their products would work w\ this reference driver as well?

I'll do the research in time but was wanting your professional opinion on this up front...........

What say ye?

 

[Pudgie]

Will need to build a slipstreamed Win 7 SP1 OS.iso w\ the MS Kb2990941 hotfix to do that as Win 7 SP1 doesn't natively support NVMe (the hotfix provides this support for Win 7 SP1) so I'm gonna try the long way around 1st as all else is already present and accounted for so all I "should" have to do is install the new NVMe SSD in my mobo's M.2 slot as the UEFI should recognize it, boot up then once in Windows after verifying that the drive can be seen (should be seen in Windows as the drive is unallocated) install the 950 Pro SSD's drivers in Windows so the OS should see the new SSD as a NVMe SSD after a reboot (have already installed the MS hotfix in Windows before I cloned it off my Plextor M6e PCI-E SSD which is occupying the M.2 slot on my mobo onto my Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD) then clone the updated OS on my 850 Pro Sata SSD onto the new NVMe SSD (which should handle all the partitioning, EFI partitioning, boot records, GPT tabling, etc) then reboot into the UEFI and reset the boot order then save and reboot............if all is good Win 7 should boot up off the NVMe SSD.

Update:

My Samsung 950 Pro 512Gb NVMe M.2 PCI-E SSD didn't get here on Friday but came Saturday afternoon.......

Performed all steps as laid out above and my Win 7 HP 64x SP1 OS booted up just fine and in good order off the NVMe SSD and all is seen in Windows as it should. The only 2 items that I had to change was to update the version of Samsung Magician software to the latest version so it can fully recognize the 950 Pro's NVMe underpinnings (had the version that came out before NVMe hit the scene) and had to use Farstone's DriveClone 11 utility to do the cloning as I found out that Samsung Magician software doesn't do disk cloning (even though I've read that this was supposed to be able to do it in the several reviews of the 950 Pro SSD).

All was looking good until I noted that the SSD wasn't running anywhere close to the rated performance speeds (running at numbers similar to a PCI-E SSD running under AHCI instead of NVMe w\ my X99 chipset showing the PCI-E lane\bandwidth specs of PCI-E 2.0 x2 instead of PCI-E 3.0 x4 (can see all this thru Samsung Magician software).............

Got to digging and sadly found out that on the Gigabyte G1 Gaming series X99 mobos from the entry level up to the Gaming 5 series the X99 chipset will only set up the M.2 slot for PCI-E AHCI mode specs (PCI-E 2.0 lane specs across 2 PCI-E lanes) so my Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD is "downclocking itself" to meet these specs and run (backwards compatibility stuff here).....and the ONLY way I found this out was by looking on Gigabyte's web site neatly tucked away in the Specifications section, Storage Interface section of my mobo and seeing the asterik's........none of this and I mean NONE of this can be found in the provided mobo MANUAL that comes w\ the mobo. These mobos CAN still run a NVMe SSD to full speeds but ONLY over the dedicated PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots that BY-PASS the X99 chipset.........

I was a little pissed off when I found all this out.......after the fact.

 

If I had known this before-hand I woulda waited a few weeks then bought this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820249082

At least this would've come w\ a heatsink to assist w\ cooling AND the color scheme would've matched my box to the tee and been real pretty in there w\ the rest of my components............

 

So I'll have to get a PCI-E to M.2 adapter card that can support NVMe drives to get my Samsung 950 Pro SSD to it's full rated performance levels......which I've already found 1 on the 'Egg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA6W4827476

Was looking good until this snafu but oh well...............

Well I know that this can be done going the route that I took this time so I got something out of all this.

I will have my fully slipstreamed .iso of Win 7 HP 64x SP1 OS on my USB stick for any future installs.

Hopefully this can be fixed w\ a UEFI BIOS update for this certain series of Gigabyte X99 mobos......................

FYI.........................

 

PS--1 thing I did find out was that the Secure Erase function in the Gigabyte F22 UEFI works like a charm.....after getting all this rearranged I used this to clean up my Samsung 850 Pro 512Gb SATA SSD and both OCZ Vertex4 256Gb SATA SSD's and restore them all back to pristine condition w\o any issues. So now I got all Sammy SSD's running in my box and have retired the 2 OCZ's for back up duty. Gonna do the same to my Plextor M6e BK 512Gb PCI-E SSD and clean it up when I get the adapter card in for the 950 Pro.

I just might use this Plextor M6e BK 512Gb PCI-E SSD in the wife's box along w\ 1 of the OCZ Vertex4 SATA SSD's as a ghost drive as I'm planning to set up a NAS on our home LAN anyway....................... ................ Should speed up her Facebook usage............

 

 

[MADe]

I been reading, I did notice that all the M.2 slots are only x2, 10GB/s, with Gigabyte. It appears only the very latest editions have a single ultra m.2 port.

"ULTRA" being the key word hear.

I believe its not fixable for you in that its how the board is wired. Anyways still reading, guess I'll learn from your troubles.
 

[Pudgie]

I been reading, I did notice that all the M.2 slots are only x2, 10GB/s, with Gigabyte. It appears only the very latest editions have a single ultra m.2 port.

"ULTRA" being the key word hear.

I believe its not fixable for you in that its how the board is wired. Anyways still reading, guess I'll learn from your troubles.
 

You're right, MADe.....this can't be fixed thru the BIOS due to the on board switch being used between the M.2 slot, the SATAe\SATAIII header and the X99 chipset...........otherwise it could and most likely wouldn't have been an issue in the 1st place.

In reality all this is really not a hassle for me......actually it's in a way fun and pleasure as I get to actually work with and do what I love to do........ Can it get frustrating.......heck YES! Can it get costly...yes it can. Is it satisfying when you work thru it and come out on the other side better than when you went into it...............YES, YES, HECK YES!

But I am a confessed computer geek so it's part of who I am..............

 

This Gigabyte X99M Gaming 5 mobo is really a very good and solid piece of hardware....but it does have some items built into it's design that really need to have been documented and explained better in the manual so that users will have a better understanding of how the devices will interface on this mobo\how some UEFI settings can\will affect devices being used on them so that users can be better prepared to avoid some of the missteps that I've gone thru as once I got thru all of them then looked back on the experience it all came down on having this documentation available up front and could have EASILY avoided them all.

That is the purpose of the manual..................

Now that I have gained some experience working w\ Gigabyte stuff, I certainly won't be shying away from using their products going forward just because I had some pitfalls and set backs w\ this 1.

I know now to just go on their web site and do the research on their products and not to depend solely on the documentation that they provide w\ them.........

I liken this Gigabyte mobo to playing Aces High..........a damn fine product but does have a learning curve to become proficient w\ it......

 

 

[Pudgie]

Here are a couple of bellybutton SSD Benchmark runs, 1 on the Plextor M6e PCI-E ATA SSD and 1 on the "crippled" Samsung 950 Pro NVMe PCI-E SSD:

Note: PostImage.org don't like the file format of the .XTML files so I'll copy\paste the results:

Plextor:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

-<ASSSDBenchmark XmlFormatVersion="1">


-<Information>

<Name>PLEXTOR PX-AG512M6e ATA Device</Name>

<Firmware>1.05</Firmware>

<Controller>msahci</Controller>

<Size>476.94 GB</Size>

<DateTime>7/20/2016 6:17:54 PM</DateTime>

<BenchmarkVersion>1.8.5636.37293</BenchmarkVersion>

<Mode>MB/s</Mode>

<Note/>

<Signature/>

</Information>


-<SeqTest>

<Read>679.70 MB/s</Read>

<Write>631.38 MB/s</Write>

</SeqTest>


-<Random4K1TTest>

<Read>29.47 MB/s</Read>

<Write>69.15 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K1TTest>


-<Random4K64TTest>

<Read>228.02 MB/s</Read>

<Write>193.61 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K64TTest>


-<AccTimeTest>

<Read>0.056 ms</Read>

<Write>0.055 ms</Write>

</AccTimeTest>


-<Score>

<Read>325</Read>

<Write>326</Write>

<Total>826</Total>

</Score>

</ASSSDBenchmark>

Samsung 950 Pro NVMe:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

-<ASSSDBenchmark XmlFormatVersion="1">


-<Information>

<Name>NVMe Samsung SSD 950 SCSI Disk Device</Name>

<Firmware>1B0Q</Firmware>

<Controller>nvme</Controller>

<Size>476.94 GB</Size>

<DateTime>7/24/2016 2:31:50 PM</DateTime>

<BenchmarkVersion>1.8.5636.37293</BenchmarkVersion>

<Mode>MB/s</Mode>

<Note/>

<Signature/>

</Information>


-<SeqTest>

<Read>712.47 MB/s</Read>

<Write>615.63 MB/s</Write>

</SeqTest>


-<Random4K1TTest>

<Read>35.07 MB/s</Read>

<Write>91.83 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K1TTest>


-<Random4K64TTest>

<Read>717.77 MB/s</Read>

<Write>362.88 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K64TTest>


-<AccTimeTest>

<Read>0.054 ms</Read>

<Write>0.034 ms</Write>

</AccTimeTest>


-<Score>

<Read>824</Read>

<Write>516</Write>

<Total>1765</Total>

</Score>

</ASSSDBenchmark>

As you can see, even crippled this NVMe PCI-E SSD outperforms it.

 

 

[Pudgie]

And the crippled Samsung NVMe 950 Pro even beats it's older brothers:

Samsung 850 Pro SATA:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

-<ASSSDBenchmark XmlFormatVersion="1">


-<Information>

<Name>Samsung SSD 850 PRO 128G SCSI Disk Device</Name>

<Firmware>EXM0</Firmware>

<Controller>iaStorA</Controller>

<Size>119.24 GB</Size>

<DateTime>7/9/2016 11:44:17 PM</DateTime>

<BenchmarkVersion>1.8.5636.37293</BenchmarkVersion>

<Mode>MB/s</Mode>

<Note/>

<Signature/>

</Information>


-<SeqTest>

<Read>522.51 MB/s</Read>

<Write>486.59 MB/s</Write>

</SeqTest>


-<Random4K1TTest>

<Read>36.43 MB/s</Read>

<Write>122.95 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K1TTest>


-<Random4K64TTest>

<Read>369.53 MB/s</Read>

<Write>316.96 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K64TTest>


-<AccTimeTest>

<Read>0.038 ms</Read>

<Write>0.027 ms</Write>

</AccTimeTest>


-<Score>

<Read>458</Read>

<Write>489</Write>

<Total>1192</Total>

</Score>

</ASSSDBenchmark

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

-<ASSSDBenchmark XmlFormatVersion="1">


-<Information>

<Name>Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512G SCSI Disk Device</Name>

<Firmware>EXM0</Firmware>

<Controller>iaStorA</Controller>

<Size>476.94 GB</Size>

<DateTime>7/9/2016 11:41:42 PM</DateTime>

<BenchmarkVersion>1.8.5636.37293</BenchmarkVersion>

<Mode>MB/s</Mode>

<Note/>

<Signature/>

</Information>


-<SeqTest>

<Read>523.22 MB/s</Read>

<Write>462.86 MB/s</Write>

</SeqTest>


-<Random4K1TTest>

<Read>36.62 MB/s</Read>

<Write>116.30 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K1TTest>


-<Random4K64TTest>

<Read>366.76 MB/s</Read>

<Write>268.58 MB/s</Write>

</Random4K64TTest>


-<AccTimeTest>

<Read>0.044 ms</Read>

<Write>0.026 ms</Write>

</AccTimeTest>


-<Score>

<Read>456</Read>

<Write>431</Write>

<Total>1130</Total>

</Score>

</ASSSDBenchmark

Looking forward to what I experience when I resolve the issue..............

 

 

[MADe]

m.2 is backward compatible so at least your drive gonna work no matter what.
I stepped thru the gigabyte boards and discovered these different implementations. Realized my original form factor choice wrong. Not many boards have PCIe x4 expansion slots either.

I luv gigabyte boards, they just work. Your right about info, you really gotta use the net to understand.


3 disc RAID0 ARRAY, disc's are 30GB ocz vertex with turbo FW.
run ATTO if you would. I'm familiar with that generated graph. U should be getting 10GB/s saturation.

Also now that you went w7, would you do it over and go w10?

[MADe]

my current 4 disc array, SATA 2.