Samsung PM961 M.2 PCIe NVMe as a duel boot drive

[QEin1985]

Hi,

Going to be ordering a Optiums VIII within the next few weeks. Need to have it as a duel boot Windows 10 / Fedora (or other similar RH linux distribution).

I have read some accounts of early PCIe NVMe storage drives not being recognised by the bios as a boot drive which is obviously resolved with the PM961 as PCS are selling machines with this as the boot drive.

Wondering if anyone knows of any bios or boot reasons there might be a problem? My knowledge of duel boots is very limited (this will be the first time I ever do one) and while I can install an OS without issue from a bootable ISO, this will be a new challenge. I have friends I can call on for advice but want to ensure what I purchase is suitable.

thanks
Matt

 

[QEin1985]

Anyone? Any advice on this?

 

[ubuysa]

I have an SM951 SSD (the precursor to the SM961) and it's my boot drive, although I'm not dual booting. The SM961 will also be fine as a boot drive and I see no reason why it shouldn't dual boot. I'd have thought that the motherboard and BIOS would be more of a dual boot issue. Your best bet is to phone PCS with the config you propose to buy and ask them whether there will be any dual booting issues.

 

[rav007]

I don't know about dual boot specifically but I can tell you that the BIOS does recognise PCIe NVMe drives as boot drives. In booting options it is one of the available disks. However, the BIOS doesn't recognise the PCIe NVMe as a SATA Drive which I think you may be referring to?! I know this is an issue. Because you plug the NVMe into a M.2 PCIe port which also handles M.2 SATA SSD. So on the main BIOS screen, the SATA controller will recognise the an M.2 SATA as a mounted drive. But if you put a PCIe SSD in there it won't see it, it will show as SATA X: Not detected or Not Present or something like this. There is another part of the BIOS which in my laptop is called the off-board PCIe controller. In that, the PCIe SSD is recognise. So on a hardware level that is how it works. It is also selectable as a bootable drive in the BIOS page where you select your boot drive preferences.

I think dual boot is on the harddrive-level. I don't think the BIOS itself knows anything about the OS? Correct me if I'm wrong anyone. But the BIOS is the board controller, so it just points to the hardware you want to use. So you can install anything on the drive and it should work in theory. Because during boot the BIOS points to the drive and the drive, if it has multiple OS's would then ask which OS you want to boot. This is how I have always seen it. This is why after the BIOS splash you get that short loading screen, often a black screen, reading the OS, namely windows, then the windows loading screen appears after that. Did this help? Anyone who knows more about this, correct me if I am wrong

 

[QEin1985]

Great answers - those explanations make sense and provide me with reassurance. I will confirm in a few weeks how it goes!

 

[Stephen M]

I have an Optimus VII with a SM961 and am running Ubuntu on it, no problem with the drive at all. One thing I would say is that while I like Fedora as an OS it does not play well with other OSs and unless they have made big changes top their install procedures you could have problems setting up the partitions, they will have to be done manually. If you go for Ubuntu, Mint or something like that the installer will partition for you, the only thing you need to do is choose how much space you want for each OS.