Z-97 and NVMe storage drive
Z-97 and NVMe storage drive
I just spent some time working with a Z97-A motherboard and faced a lot of frustration trying to get things right. I hope this helps because I was wasting time on the simplest fix. First, I installed my drive, but it didn’t appear in BIOS or Windows. I had to change a setting to enable M.2 support instead of PCIe x2. After that, Windows detected it and I cloned the drive. When I tried to boot from it, it still wasn’t showing up. I looked up advice and found that Z97 usually doesn’t support NVMe booting, which made me worried. I disabled Secure Boot and CSM in BIOS, then installed Windows from a USB drive. The install stopped after a loop, only restarting the USB each time. Eventually, I updated my BIOS, and everything worked smoothly. Now I’m using a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB, which is running perfectly. If you’re doing this, make sure your BIOS is up to date and your Windows installation is current for compatibility.