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First post, by Malik

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Didn't put this in Hardware section since this is a generic non-vintage question.

Is it possible to partition NVME as MBR instead of GPT and boot it in legacy mode (yes,keeping in mind the 4P/3P+Ext partition limitations) ?

Thanks for any info.

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Reply 1 of 14, by mockingbird

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You can partition an NVMe drive any which way you want, but if you want to boot from it, your system must meet the following criteria:

1) Your BIOS must support booting from NVMe drives (i.e. it needs an NVMe module)
2) Your NVMe drive needs a second legacy OPROM

Samsung drives are examples of NVMe drives that have a built in legacy OPROM.

If your drive doesn't meet this second criteria, then it will only boot in UEFI mode.

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Reply 2 of 14, by zyzzle

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That's an interesting question; I've never tried to format any NVMe drive as an MBR partition. It is good to know that Samsung drives do support MBR booting, and they've stepped up and not brushed legacy users aside as every newer system seems to have done. (Many or most new systems no longer even have a CSM BIOS or even support MBR or non-UEFI booting. That's really such a shame, and there's no good reason for it.)

Thankfully I use Samsung NVMe drives exclusively, so it's good to know I've made the right choice all along, with regards to legacy boot support.

It's similar to how no Chromebook supports MBR booting or even has a CSM BIOS, it's all a walled-garden of UEFI 64-bit OS boot only...

Reply 3 of 14, by mockingbird

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zyzzle wrote on 2022-01-19, 07:41:

It is good to know that Samsung drives do support MBR booting, and they've stepped up and not brushed legacy users aside as every newer system seems to have done.

Don't be so sure they'll keep doing this with future models though... I can confirm that a model as late as the 970 series has it, not sure about the newer ones. Cheers.

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Reply 4 of 14, by The Serpent Rider

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There's a misunderstanding. The only Samsung NVME SSD which has legacy bootrom is Samsung 950 Pro, which is quite old already. Another NMVE SSD with such support is Plextor M8Pe, equally outdated, and that's it.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 5 of 14, by mockingbird

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-01-19, 19:19:

There's a misunderstanding. The only Samsung NVME SSD which has legacy bootrom is Samsung 950 Pro, which is quite old already. Another NMVE SSD with such support is Plextor M8Pe, equally outdated, and that's it.

I will test this claim (perhaps, without a promise of commitment) in the following manner:

I have two systems, one uses an ASRock B250M Pro4 motherboard, and the other uses an MSI 970A-G46 motherboard.

The ASRock board is my current system, and houses a 970Pro drive, and boots to Windows XP, without a boot intercessor.
The MSI board had a UEFI module injected by a third-party modder, and will not boot a 2018-circa Lite-ON NVMe drive.

If the MSI board boots the Samsung drive, then it lends credence to my suggestion. If not, then there's something wrong with the MSI BIOS implementation (it does in fact also refuse to boot from certain brands of USB sticks).

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Reply 6 of 14, by zyzzle

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-01-19, 19:19:

There's a misunderstanding. The only Samsung NVME SSD which has legacy bootrom is Samsung 950 Pro, which is quite old already. Another NMVE SSD with such support is Plextor M8Pe, equally outdated, and that's it.

I'm confused. I have an 860, 960, and 970 Pro. You're saying none of these will work as legacy boot (MBR, non-GPT) in a CSR legacy boot OS. As in, I couldn't boot MS-DOS, Windows XP, or Windows 98 on such drives, even though my BIOS does have a legacy-boot module and code?

Reply 7 of 14, by The Serpent Rider

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I'm confused. I have an 860, 960, and 970 Pro.

860 is SATA.

As in, I couldn't boot MS-DOS, Windows XP, or Windows 98 on such drives, even though my BIOS does have a legacy-boot module and code?

You can't boot on NVME without driver. Unofficial Windows XP driver does exist though.

, even though my BIOS does have a legacy-boot module and code?

Listed drives are the only compatible NVME SSDs which will work as boot device on any old non-UEFI system without external boot loader

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 8 of 14, by Sphere478

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You should be able to put a sata m.2 on a adapter and treat it like a normal drive on a legacy system. A nvme pcie if you get it working on a legacy system can be formatted mbr but booting can be tricky supposedly some versions of grub and clover can help

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Reply 10 of 14, by digger

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-01-21, 16:12:

is it possible to migrate a disk image of an installed Windows 10 system from a MBR drive to a UEFI one?

Yes, I successfully performed such a migration once. However, you need to do this on a system that can boot in both UEFI and Legacy BIOS mode. (Although it might work in something like VirtualBox as well.)

Basically, there are two aspects here: migrating from MBR to GPT, and from Legacy BIOS boot to UEFI boot. In the case of Windows, both migrations have to be performed together anyway, since Windows doesn't support booting a disk with a GPT partition scheme in Legacy BIOS mode (and I believe booting an MBR disk from UEFI isn't supported by Windows either, but I'm not sure).

You can find guides on-line for this.

Reply 11 of 14, by GulchWinder3D

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-01-21, 16:12:

is it possible to migrate a disk image of an installed Windows 10 system from a MBR drive to a UEFI one?

I've done this recently with an old x58 based system I still use as my daily. A lot of guides out there will tell you how to partition the drive manually as GPT, how to set up the EFI partition and whatnot, but I just installed a fresh copy of Windows on that drive to do those steps automatically, then reimaged the windows partition itself with the one on my old SATA ssd with Clonezilla. I did have a BSOD every time I booted into Windows 10 right after imaging, but that problem was cleared up immediately after one boot into safe mode. Been working great, so far.

Reply 12 of 14, by maxtherabbit

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GulchWinder3D wrote on 2022-01-22, 12:06:
maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-01-21, 16:12:

is it possible to migrate a disk image of an installed Windows 10 system from a MBR drive to a UEFI one?

I've done this recently with an old x58 based system I still use as my daily. A lot of guides out there will tell you how to partition the drive manually as GPT, how to set up the EFI partition and whatnot, but I just installed a fresh copy of Windows on that drive to do those steps automatically, then reimaged the windows partition itself with the one on my old SATA ssd with Clonezilla. I did have a BSOD every time I booted into Windows 10 right after imaging, but that problem was cleared up immediately after one boot into safe mode. Been working great, so far.

neat trick, I'm going to try that

Reply 14 of 14, by mockingbird

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I just want to confirm that my 970Pro that boots on my AsRock B250M does not boot on my MSI board (with NVMe module manually added). So it appears you were right @The Serpent Rider and that it is more motherboard dependent.

So I would say that your motherboard needs to have a legacy OPRom for NVMe.

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