can I disable NVMe slot?

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polonyc2

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after an NVMe drive is installed is there any way for me to disable it without physically removing the drive?...I want the ability to boot into another SATA SSD drive independently...meaning I want to install another copy of Windows 10 onto the SATA drive and use that...is there a setting in the BIOS that disables the NVMe slot?...can I then re-enable it and get back the drive with everything installed on it intact?...I have an MSI X570 Tomahawk motherboard

with SATA SSD's (and older mechanical hard drives) it was easy to just unplug the SATA cable and plug it into a new drive
 
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I was wondering this same question not too long ago but came up unsatisfied, it seems like such an obvious feature to have.
 
have you bothered to look in your bios at all or RTFM? if you cant turn it completely off, remove it from the boot device list.
 
pendragon1 said:
have you bothered to look in your bios at all or RTFM? if you cant turn it completely off, remove it from the boot device list.
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of course I looked in the BIOS and tried out multiple ways of doing it first (and searched online)...you're always so condescending with your responses
 
polonyc2 said:
of course I looked in the BIOS and tried out multiple ways of doing it first (and searched online)...you're always so condescending with your responses
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youre always so touchy, wash the sand out and set you boot device to only the one you want.
 
pendragon1 said:
youre always so touchy, wash the sand out and set you boot device to only the one you want.
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you're always looking to put people down or talk down to people who don't have the same level of knowledge as you do...the very nature of forums are supposed to be a place where people ask questions and learn...yes some questions may be beginner level but everyone was a beginner at some point...just because you may find something to be beneath you or obvious then just don't respond...I'm trying to learn about this so I'll have that knowledge going forward
 
polonyc2 said:
you're always looking to put people down or talk down to people who don't have the same level of knowledge as you do...the very nature of forums are supposed to be a place where people ask questions and learn...just because you may find something to be beneath you or obvious then just don't respond...I'm trying to learn about this so I'll have that knowledge going forward
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i think youll find that your full of shit. give attitude, get attitude.
 
You can always choose your boot device in your bios, you don't have to disable the slot. You've been able to specify your boot device in your BIOS since the beginning of time.
 
Generally you can't disable PCIE/add-in card devices which nvme drives are considered, some OC oriented boards have physical switches to disable them but most don't have this. I'm not sure why it's hard for people to say this without being a jerk but whatever I guess.
 
D-EJ915 said:
Generally you can't disable PCIE/add-in card devices which nvme drives are considered, some OC oriented boards have physical switches to disable them but most don't have this. I'm not sure why it's hard for people to say this without being a jerk but whatever I guess.
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he made no mention of any attempts of figuring it out in his own in the op. so i asked and he got his panties in a twist.
pendragon1 said:
if you cant turn it completely off, remove it from the boot device list.
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and i provided a solution/option.

so the "never helpful, just mean" bit is bs. my post history will also prove that....
 
D-EJ915 said:
Generally you can't disable PCIE/add-in card devices which nvme drives are considered, some OC oriented boards have physical switches to disable them but most don't have this. I'm not sure why it's hard for people to say this without being a jerk but whatever I guess.
Click to expand...

it's too bad they can't be disabled...wouldn't be so bad if the NVMe location on the motherboard was someplace easy to reach but with my motherboard it involves removing the GPU first...way too much work to have to do that every time I want to switch to a SATA drive...all motherboard manufacturers should put in an option to allow M.2 NVMe slots to be disabled in the BIOS
 
D-EJ915 said:
Generally you can't disable PCIE/add-in card devices which nvme drives are considered, some OC oriented boards have physical switches to disable them but most don't have this. I'm not sure why it's hard for people to say this without being a jerk but whatever I guess.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, it makes sense as a PCI device. I would still think that given the specific case of the lane being used for storage it should be standard to have a way to disable the drive in situations where one would wish to isolate it from the rest of the system.
 
I have an idea, but it carries some risk of messing up your booting.
I think you could install a bootloader like Grub onto the nvme, it should be then able to boot from the other drives it sees.
I havent done this in years, but maybe it's a starting point.
 
Unfortunately, there is no way to do what you want at the hardware level. One thing you could do is create a Virtual Machine, pass-through the secondary m.2 drive to that VM and this way you can have virtualized hardware access to that drive while the rest of the system above the Hypervisor ignores whatever space you use for the VM file and you can have the VM not see any upstream local drives as well.
 
polonyc2 said:
you're always looking to put people down or talk down to people who don't have the same level of knowledge as you do...the very nature of forums are supposed to be a place where people ask questions and learn...yes some questions may be beginner level but everyone was a beginner at some point...just because you may find something to be beneath you or obvious then just don't respond...I'm trying to learn about this so I'll have that knowledge going forward
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No need to respond. Just add him to your ignore list and move along. Very easy forum feature and very handy.
 
jmilcher said:
No need to respond. Just add him to your ignore list and move along. Very easy forum feature and very handy.
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I second this advice. After only my second interaction with Pendragon I added him to my ignore list. His M.O. is belittling and talking down to fellow forum members. I'm honestly surprised he's lasted on the [H] this long.
 
I am using AMI BIOS 2.16.1240 (dated 2015) on an ASUS H97-PLUS motherboard. In the BIOS, I go to Advanced > PCH Storage Configuration > SATA (SATA 5,6) and M.2 Configuration.

It offers a choice among Auto, SATA, or M.2. I choose SATA > F10 > Enter. On reboot, the system returns to BIOS. It appears not to find a bootable operating system. If I change that choice from SATA to Auto or M.2, the system reboots into the Windows 10 installation on the M.2 drive.

With that item set to SATA, I boot a live Ubuntu USB drive. It boots by default; I don't have to select it in BIOS. That is, Ubuntu appears to be the only OS it finds. (This BIOS doesn't seem to offer an F12 option.) In Ubuntu, I open the Disks program and look at the drives listed. It does not list the M.2 drive. I reboot, change SATA back to M.2, select the Ubuntu USB, and boot into Ubuntu again. Now Disks does list the M.2 drive.

This PCH Storage Configuration setting appears to offer the kind of solution the OP is looking for. Does this option not exist in other BIOSes - or did AMI remove it sometime after 2015 - or is it just hard to find?
 
raywood1 said:
I am using AMI BIOS 2.16.1240 (dated 2015) on an ASUS H97-PLUS motherboard. In the BIOS, I go to Advanced > PCH Storage Configuration > SATA (SATA 5,6) and M.2 Configuration.

It offers a choice among Auto, SATA, or M.2. I choose SATA > F10 > Enter. On reboot, the system returns to BIOS. It appears not to find a bootable operating system. If I change that choice from SATA to Auto or M.2, the system reboots into the Windows 10 installation on the M.2 drive.

With that item set to SATA, I boot a live Ubuntu USB drive. It boots by default; I don't have to select it in BIOS. That is, Ubuntu appears to be the only OS it finds. (This BIOS doesn't seem to offer an F12 option.) In Ubuntu, I open the Disks program and look at the drives listed. It does not list the M.2 drive. I reboot, change SATA back to M.2, select the Ubuntu USB, and boot into Ubuntu again. Now Disks does list the M.2 drive.

This PCH Storage Configuration setting appears to offer the kind of solution the OP is looking for. Does this option not exist in other BIOSes - or did AMI remove it sometime after 2015 - or is it just hard to find?
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Very often, motherboards will share address space among multiple chooseable items because it doesn't have enough to go around. If you enable SATA (5,6), it wholesale disables the shared m.2 (like it isn't even there) and vice versa. That is why they usually do it with the higher port # SATA ports., because with the m.2 you are less likely to need more than the first 4 SATA.
 
polonyc2 said:
after an NVMe drive is installed is there any way for me to disable it without physically removing the drive?
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No, because it would mean you're probably trying to do something illegal.
 
This is what you want to do, install Windows on the NVME, then remove the NVME and install windows on the SATA drive.
After you get both installed, re-install the NVME and then when the PC is booting you can set the NVME as the 1st boot device and if you want to boot from the SATA drive, just press whatever key your motherboard uses for the quick boot option and select the SATA drive to boot from.
 
D-EJ915 said:
Generally you can't disable PCIE/add-in card devices which nvme drives are considered, some OC oriented boards have physical switches to disable them but most don't have this. I'm not sure why it's hard for people to say this without being a jerk but whatever I guess.
Click to expand...
Depends on the motherboard and options.
I can disable either m.2 slots on any of my thin clients and variety of motherboards, be it SATA or NVMe, but the mileage may vary between motherboards/systems.

+1 to changing/removing the boot option for it if the option to disable it is not present.
That way the device can remain enabled and the boot sequence just skips it.
 
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Perhaps inconvenient, but can't you just enter the UEFI selector and boot whatever from there? Many contemporary platforms have this capability.

Edit: Ok, booting vs. installing... my bad.
 
philb2 said:
????
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Yeah, I have no idea what they are on about either.
Hopefully your motherboard supports the function to disable the NVMe m.2 slot.

Might be worth updating the BIOS/UEFI to see if a later revision adds this function as it isn't that uncommon.
 
learners permit said:
So keeping a backup of your Nvme on an ssd is illegal now?
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Tongue-in-cheek, because the why of wanting to disable the M.2 slot was never mentioned.

The solution depends on whether its for privacy, convenience, whatever, since there are different methods and pricepoints. Toggle the SATA drive on/off in BIOS instead of the M.2 drive. Or get a $10 PCIe carrier card for the M.2 drive so its easy to pull. Or an external M.2 NVME carrier that connects with an 18" SAS cable to an x4 PCIe card. Or a diskpart command in shell:startup to de-map the drive letter of the drive you don't want visible to the OS. Or TrueCrypt. Or Hyper-V. Lots of ways.

But an M.2 slot can't be "turned off" mostly because its physically, electrically connected to the PCIe bus and it's power rail, just an x4 PCIe slot with a different form factor. Like plugging a lamp into a wall socket and you can't "disable" or de-energize the lamp without just unplugging it. The motherboard knows the addresses of the M.2 slots, and could technically be programmed to ignore the device in an M.2 slot with a toggle if a motherboard designer was ever compelled to, but the drive itself would still be energized and accumulating power-on hours.
 
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DPI said:
because the why of wanting to disable the M.2 slot was never mentioned
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I think fear of an windows os install touching some other drive than the one you pick is quite common, combined with m.2 drive being more complicated to simply unplug than drive in the past (often being GPU and what not)
 
DPI said:
But an M.2 slot can't be "turned off" mostly because its physically, electrically connected to the PCIe bus and it's power rail, just an x4 PCIe slot with a different form factor. Like plugging a lamp into a wall socket and you can't "disable" or de-energize the lamp without just unplugging it. The motherboard knows the addresses of the M.2 slots, and could technically be programmed to ignore the device in an M.2 slot with a toggle if a motherboard designer was ever compelled to, but the drive itself would still be energized and accumulating power-on hours.
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It is possible to disable the M.2 slots, be it SATA or NVMe, at least at the firmware/BIOS/UEFI level.
We have thin clients that allow that very option for both, whether or not they are populated.

LukeTbk said:
I think fear of an windows os install touching some other drive than the one you pick is quite common, combined with m.2 drive being more complicated to simply unplug than drive in the past (often being GPU and what not)
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Exactly this.
 
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Red Falcon said:
It is possible to disable the M.2 slots, be it SATA or NVMe, at least at the firmware/BIOS/UEFI level.
We have thin clients that allow that very option for both, whether or not they are populated.
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Yep I've got a few HP SFF's with the M.2 BIOS toggle, but didn't seem relevant since Ive never seen an M.2 toggle on a retail MB. And on OEM prebuilts with the toggle, the drive is still energized and accumulating power on hours even if the BIOS is ignoring the PCI address.

So again it goes back to first defining why someone's trying to do something to be able to measure a success condition.
 
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DPI said:
Yep I've got a few HP SFF's with the M.2 BIOS toggle, but didn't seem relevant since Ive never seen an M.2 toggle on a retail MB. And on OEM prebuilts with the toggle, the drive is still energized and accumulating power on hours even if the BIOS is ignoring the PCI address.

So again it goes back to first defining why someone's trying to do something to be able to measure a success condition.
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Basically just during an installation of one drive or the other so that the other drive won't interfere with the installation without having to physically remove it.
It just adds ease of use, and I have done this myself from time to time.
 
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Zepher said:
This is what you want to do, install Windows on the NVME, then remove the NVME and install windows on the SATA drive.
After you get both installed, re-install the NVME and then when the PC is booting you can set the NVME as the 1st boot device and if you want to boot from the SATA drive, just press whatever key your motherboard uses for the quick boot option and select the SATA drive to boot from.
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Then go into device manager and disable the other drive in each instance of windows if you want to.
 
stormy1 said:
Then go into device manager and disable the other drive in each instance of windows if you want to.
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That doesn't work during the middle of an OS installation to another drive, and what is being requested is at the firmware level, not the OS/software level.
 
Red Falcon said:
That doesn't work during the middle of an OS installation to another drive, and what is being requested is at the firmware level, not the OS/software level.
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Ok
I just disconnected/removed drives for the install when I set up a similar system.
You can then use the motherboards keyboard shortcut to pick a boot drive.
I used grub on a usb drive to pick between the 4 oses.
2 windows versions, Debian and freebsd
 
stormy1 said:
I just disconnected/removed drives for the install when I set up a similar system.
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I agree with your method, and I do that during OS installs as well.
However, this is exactly what the OP is trying to avoid by not having to remove the additional drives by just disabling them.

As others have stated, not all motherboards/BIOS support this, so your method is exactly what the OP will continue to need to do.
 
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