Hardware & Technical M.2 NVMe SSD in Win 7 system - all sorted thanks

[Para Handy]

I am about to get a new 1TB SSD (current OS is on a 586GB one) and I have been toying with the idea of fitting a M.2 NVMe SSD. However, I really don't want to move from W7 pro to W10 and I am a bit concerned that I might have to do so to be able to use this.

Considering this Samsung: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-V-NAND-Express-Solid-State/dp/B07CGJNLBB/

MY Mobo is an ASUS Maximus VIII Hero with an i7 6700K @4GHz (the mobo can handle PCIEx4 on the M.2)

OS W7pro 64 bit SP1

So any tech guru able to offer insight on using M.2 NVME with this setup please?

 

[Dural]

This says not a problem running W7 from an M2 on your board although one person was having issues which was fixed with a BIOS update.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...om-you-m-2-SM-951-on-Asus-Maximuss-VIII-guide

 

[Para Handy]

This says not a problem running W7 from an M2 on your board although one person was having issues which was fixed with a BIOS update.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...om-you-m-2-SM-951-on-Asus-Maximuss-VIII-guide

I saw that and a few others like it and they seem to be the SATA (AHCI) type - I really don't want to waste 2 SATA connectors to fit something that isn't going to run at the PCIEx4 speed. I know W7 will run with it as a SATA connection, I am interested in running it in W7 at the higher data rate but I can't find out for sure if W7 can actually handle that.

 

[cmdr milesred]

It will work fine in win 7 . any bios update if needed will be from MB manufacturer, but as long as you are already running smoothly, it is unlikely that you will need anything updated.

Considering that your MB actually has a slot for the m2, you will be very happy with the addition.



I can only add that if you do want to lose some win 7 functionality and gain some new bugs then use win 10 POS.

As a computer tech I will happily compare win 10 efficiency to win 95 efficiency....

 

[Para Handy]

Well I found some stuff on Samsung's site which included a driver to use NVMe in W7 so time to pull the trigger I think.

 

[Dural]

There is a hotfix to add NVMe support to W7 and some other useful stuff here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...er-support-in-nvm-express-in-windows-7-and-wi

GL

 

[cmdr milesred]

my only question to you would be why you didn't fill that slot a long time ago...
I have 2 laptops, and a zotac mini pc that all have m2 slots, I filled them when I bought them due to the speed of the m2 cards, never gave it a second thought.
For my Zotac mini, as it is such a small box, it has space restrictions and for it I bought a startech adapter that allows me to use 2 m2's in raid stripe.
One of my laptops actually has 2 raid configurable m2 slots, and came that way anyway - MSI...incredible speeds on these machines, thanks to the m2 devices.
I like them so much I even bought another adapter that allows me to use an m2 drive on usb 3... I have a huge collection of all types of usb flash drives and only a few are near the speed of the usb3 m2 device.
1 laptop and the zotac use win 7 ultimate 64bit, 1 laptop is still only using win xp pro 64bit. zero issues, and the usb3-m2 adapter works on all my pc's no issues..

 

[Morbad]

The issue is that the default Windows 7 builds don't have any NVMe drivers available during installation. So, to boot Windows 7 from an NVMe drive you either have to slipstream the driver into the install iso, have an F6/floppy driver for your device available at the time of install, or migrate an already updated install to the NVMe drive after the fact.

 

[cmdr milesred]

I don't see that as an issue, all my m2 devices came with a cd that had the drivers for windows, Linux, os2 and a few others...And for any hardware that doesn't come with a cd with drivers, you can usually get them from their web site....and depending on the device, sometimes you can get the drivers from elsewhere...intel is a great example of a place you can get drivers from related to chipset support for drives for example...so a person can upgrade their own bios to accept a new drive and so much more..
And in my case, I didn't even have to use the cd's. The devices were visible in Bios and presented no issues at all.

more importantly, if the device is visible in BIOS, then it is bootable regardless of drivers. setting it to boot from a device will then work, even if it has to work as a slightly different than expected drive type due to windows not having the exact driver.
In a case where the mb actually has an m2 slot, I would bet that it could easily have utilized the slot as a boot device from day 1.

 

[cmdr milesred]

TBH, I would expect the reason to be more aligned with the cost of M2 devices, which has gone down dramatically like ssd's.
for example the dual 256gb m2 drives I originally put in my Zotac were $540 each....now they are under $100 for that size...hard to sometimes justify putting over a thousand dollar drive setup in a $300 computer...

 

[Shadowdancer]

more importantly, if the device is visible in BIOS, then it is bootable regardless of drivers.

Hell No. Windows still has problems when switching SATA devices between AHCI and IDE.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I read in the features of the M.2: "Get stunning sequential read / write speeds of 3500 / 2500 Mb / s and 500000 / 480000 IOPS"

With my Samsung 850 pro SSD and the "Rapid mode", I get the sequential rates and also the random IOPS in image below.

Of course it is a passage in cache RAM, je believe.

But I never have a problem or loss of data.

Of course the IOPS are lower with my SSD.

Something escapes me ? Maybe there is also a "Rapid Mode" on the M.2 which increases more the performance ?

https://imgur.com/a/3ATuj25

 

[cmdr milesred]

barely worth a response...
and is profanity really necessary for this conversation?
Sata and IDE are device connection types that also use very different software to work them, another is scsi - this is hardware...
AHCI is software used on either(Advanced Host Controller Interface) it can be used on ata, pata, sata, scsi.
so...there is no comparison being made here to any of these... and no switching....the decision will be made at boot time either by BIOS or by any boot drivers installed for specific hardware or by windows boot control or at times combinations of these.
And when talking about bios, I am then referring to dos, then to windows....if bios can see a device, then its up to dos or fake dos(windows boot control) to then take control from either bios or dos. and if bios can see a drive, then it is extremely unlikely that one of the numerous sata controllers in windows cannot then also see the drive in order to at least be able to continue booting then find a correct one in the updates. Yes, it is always possible that it can't, this is much more likely to occur with brand new technology.

But back to your tremendous statement....irrelevant in a few ways.as I said sata and ide are 2 very different references to a physical connection type...so its not even a thing here. and in this case its actually an m2, which is basically a micro sata, but it is additional hardware that windows would have detected on first boot, even if it was empty, windows will have to either use an existing driver for the specific drive installed in the slot or look at updates to find a better one if it cannot find one that will work. and if it can't do either, then you will get a notification that it found new hardware but it could not be installed. this will be drive specific and not at all related to the m2 slot, but related to what is in that slot. If you are making it the boot drive, then it will be reported quite differently and in such a case its very likely that even in the drives manual if it did or didn't come with a driver cd it most likely will state that you should visit their site before installing in order to make sure you have the latest drivers.
next, if the m2 slot is on the motherboard then chances are very high that windows already dealt with this on its first load. if there is no yellow triangle or otherwise unknown devices listed under hardware management, then the odds are pretty high that it will be good to go, even if a newer device is added to the slot, it will likely still work, but maybe not with full functionality.

So no matter how you look at it, not really an issue of any kind, especially with windows 7.

 

[cmdr milesred]

I read in the features of the M.2: "Get stunning sequential read / write speeds of 3500 / 2500 Mb / s and 500000 / 480000 IOPS"

With my Samsung 850 pro SSD and the "Rapid mode", I get the sequential rates and also the random IOPS in image below.

Of course it is a passage in cache RAM, je believe.

But I never have a problem or loss of data.

Of course the IOPS are lower with my SSD.

Something escapes me ? Maybe there is also a "Rapid Mode" on the M.2 which increases more the performance ?

https://imgur.com/a/3ATuj25

Not too sure what you mean, but what I can see in the image is that site seems to have neglected the decimal, 540/680 is quite good for that drive. you can almost double that by putting 2 together in raid stripe mode. again, quite good.
If you are believing what I see in the image that it thinks the speed is 6804/5403... all I can say is that there is no way that speed is possible for that drive. I do have no problem believing though that their mb/s refers to megabits per second, in which case then the numbers are actually much more in line with expected values of that drive with windows already installed on it and has been used for a short while.
And then yes, you can expect the M2 drive to be quite a bit faster than that.
From my own experiences with M2 drives, I would have no problem at all in believing the numbers listed in the specs for that device on the Samsung site.
FWIW, try something like crystaldisk or atto bench...see what they tell you about your 850..I wouldn't put much faith in any web site anyway for a hd test, and even less trust for one that's not going to indicate megabytes per sec or megabits per sec...

 

[cmdr milesred]

I would like to add also, that if you can, I would try to make a Norton ghost copy of your install and see if you can then place that ghost on the new drive.
If you are able to do this, there is a very good chance that windows will see the new hardware at first boot, then reboot and run as smooth as can be after that.
If you have the right version of ghost and with that MB, its likely to take less than an hour to do the change.

 

[Para Handy]

I read in the features of the M.2: "Get stunning sequential read / write speeds of 3500 / 2500 Mb / s and 500000 / 480000 IOPS"

With my Samsung 850 pro SSD and the "Rapid mode", I get the sequential rates and also the random IOPS in image below.

.........
Something escapes me ? Maybe there is also a "Rapid Mode" on the M.2 which increases more the performance ?

..........

The reason your figures are so low compared to the quote you use is probably that you are running the M.2 SSD in SATA mode (or maybe it is only capable of SATA).

The higher figures in your quote are the transfer rates for SSD in M.2 using NVMe - which uses the PCI bus to access the SSD memory and does not use SATA.

You should check your SSD to see if it is NVMe capable and if so, sort out your BIOS to enable the use of that for M.2 socket (if it is a type "M" socket).

 

[Para Handy]

barely worth a response...
............
Sata and IDE are device connection types that also use very different software to work them, another is scsi - this is hardware...
A...........

Not too sure what you mean, but what I can see in the image is that site seems to have neglected the decimal, 540/680 is quite good for that drive. you can almost double that by putting 2 together in raid stripe mode. again, quite good.
...........

It seems to me that you are pontificating from misunderstanding.

Your confusion seems to explain now your apparent misunderstanding of my question regarding W7 and NVMe and so I suspect you just run your SSD(s) in SATA mode, which of course W7 can see with no issues.

M.2 SSDs come in two flavours - SATA and NVMe. SATA is much slower. NVMe is hugely faster as it does not go through the AHCI interface but is accessed directly via the PCIe bus.

 

[Morbad]

I don't see that as an issue, all my m2 devices came with a cd that had the drivers for windows, Linux, os2 and a few others...And for any hardware that doesn't come with a cd with drivers, you can usually get them from their web site....and depending on the device, sometimes you can get the drivers from elsewhere...intel is a great example of a place you can get drivers from related to chipset support for drives for example...so a person can upgrade their own bios to accept a new drive and so much more..
And in my case, I didn't even have to use the cd's. The devices were visible in Bios and presented no issues at all.

more importantly, if the device is visible in BIOS, then it is bootable regardless of drivers. setting it to boot from a device will then work, even if it has to work as a slightly different than expected drive type due to windows not having the exact driver.
In a case where the mb actually has an m2 slot, I would bet that it could easily have utilized the slot as a boot device from day 1.

Unless you add those drivers to the install image for Windows, Windows 7 won't be able to use it, even if it's perfectly visible in the BIOS.

so...there is no comparison being made here to any of these... and no switching....the decision will be made at boot time either by BIOS or by any boot drivers installed for specific hardware or by windows boot control or at times combinations of these.

He was pointing out that simply changing the protocol used at the firmware level will prevent Windows 7 from booting, even if Windows 7 has drivers for both.

Windows 7 has no native NVMe drivers without a post-RTM update and cannot natively boot from NVMe without them.

Yes, it is always possible that it can't, this is much more likely to occur with brand new technology.

The last official Windows 7 install ISO has a build date that pre-dates NVMe support by several years.

sata and ide are 2 very different references to a physical connection type

Sata devices generally support AHCI, but can also operate in an IDE compatibility mode as a fall back.

Windows 7 has native drivers for both, but if you install Windows 7 on a drive attached to a controller configured as AHCI then switch it to IDE mode in the BIOS, the OS will BSOD on boot. Same goes with the reverse process. You have to manually force different drivers over the existing controller before you switch it's type.

and in this case its actually an m2, which is basically a micro sata

M.2 is a physical form factor that can pass through SATA, but many don't, and many M.2 drives aren't SATA at all.

None of my M.2 devices are SATA devices. My oldest one is PCI-E with an AHCI controller that Windows 7 will recognize by default, while all of the others are PCI-E NVMe devices that Windows 7 cannot see without being updated first.

So no matter how you look at it, not really an issue of any kind, especially with windows 7.

You are mistaken.

Try it yourself. Unless you add NVMe drivers to the install image, or have the driver on hand in a drive Windows 7 can access during install, you cannot install Windows 7 to an NVMe device.

I would like to add also, that if you can, I would try to make a Norton ghost copy of your install and see if you can then place that ghost on the new drive.
If you are able to do this, there is a very good chance that windows will see the new hardware at first boot, then reboot and run as smooth as can be after that.

This will only work if you are careful to manually enable the NVMe driver before you image the install. Otherwise Windows 7 will just BSOD on start up as it fails to access the drive with the correct driver.

M.2 SSDs come in two flavours - SATA and NVMe. SATA is much slower. NVMe is hugely faster as it does not go through the AHCI interface but is accessed directly via the PCIe bus.

Three flavors.

It's hard to find non-NVMe PCI-E M.2 SSDs now, but they do exist and are generally between SATA and NVMe drives in performance. Same AHCI protocol as the SATA drives, but with a faster physical interface.

 

[Shadowdancer]

SATA and NVMe. SATA is much slower.

Not that it matters all that much for consumer workloads. The big step is replacing spinning rust with any moderately fast SSD, NVMe is nice but not vastly important outside benchmarks, and the big selling point there would be leaving the first SATA port available. Even an HDD killer like updating Elite leaves my cheap SATA WD Blue rather bored. (Filling my 16GB RAM with cooked assets from my NVMe stick would take around 5 seconds, versus 30-ish from the SATA unit… I think I'd live even through that harsh scenario )

 

[Morbad]

In most practical use, I have difficulty distinguishing from a third gen, eight year old, SATA II SSD that lacks NCQ and a modern PCI-E 4x NVMe SSD than benches ten times faster. There are certainly a few exceptions, but in general, diminishing returns kick in pretty quickly as soon as you leave the limitations of mechanical drives behind.