booting to thumb drive

[Voyager818]

Hello.
first time on forum
first time with a uefi bios
very familiar with legacy bios.

I have a Intel 750 Series 2.5" 400GB
PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 MLC that I want to install to
m.2 connection on the way and want to install
win 7 from a usb drive. I created an install thumb drive
using WintoFlash, set BIOS to boot to thumb drive but it doesn't
boot to the drive when I restart. I have a
Maximus Hero II with the latest bios.
There are a few extra bios boot entries I am not familiar with.
Any help will be appreciated.

[Praz]

Hello

In the boot section of the BIOS you need to set CSM to disabled. During POST press F8 to access the boot menu and select your USB stick as the boot device. You are aware that the PCIe version of the 750 is recommended for the Z97 platform and not the 2.5" drive? The M.2 slot on the M7H is connected to the PCH instead of the CPU and is only X2 instead of x4 bandwidth. Both will result in decreased performance.

[Voyager818]

I will look into the bios again.
Juan Jose Guerrero of ASUS's video at NewEgg says no difference
in performance. I will check video again but drive will be here thursday.
Thanks for the reply.

[Praz]

Voyager818 wrote:
I will look into the bios again.
Juan Jose Guerrero of ASUS's video at NewEgg says no difference
in performance. I will check video again but drive will be here thursday.
Thanks for the reply.

Hello

I doubt JJ has indicated that. Actually he states just the opposite as quoted below. The drive is designed for use with 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The PCIe lanes from the PCH on Z97 is 2.0 which is half the bandwidth of 3.0 and the two lane wired to the M.2 slot provides half the bandwidth of 4 lanes. So both taken together extremely limits performance of the drive.

The Intel 750 series SSD needs a M.2 slot that has been connected to CPU PCIe lanes with a support PCIe lane connection up to 4x ( x4 PCIe ) to ensure it reaches its fully defined performance levels. The Z97 chipset due to a reduced number of PCIe lanes provided by the CPU is not traditionally equipped with M.2 slots offering this level of PCIe connectivity / bandwidth.
This means if installed on a Z97 motherboard the SSD will work and you will still benefit from a wide range of the architecture and performance benefits but you will have considerably limited the maximum sequential performance of the SSD.

https://pcdiy.asus.com/2015/04/asus-z97-x99-motherboards-intel-750-series-nvme-ssds-all-you-need-to-...

[Voyager818]

Hello PRAZ

HA! I guess we were looking in the same places.

[Voyager818]

Found this on pcdiy.asus.com.

"This means if installed on a Z97 motherboard the SSD will work and you will still benefit from a wide
range of the architecture and performance benefits but you will have considerably limited the
maximum sequential performance of the SSD. "
Being an early adopter of technology has its drawbacks.
But it will still be faster than my 840 pro or my WD Raptors raid O.

I found another boot menu in the bios that seems redundant but it was the one
I was looking for. Now going to make a slipstream version of win 7 install usb drive
with SP1 and all drivers and see if that works when the 750 gets here.
Thanks again.

[Praz]

Hello

If you are using Win7 the install needs to specially prep'd for a UEFI install. Goggle should get you this info.

[Voyager818]

Thanks Praz
Slipstreamed SP1 and created a ISO
then used RUFUS to create the bootable thumb drive.
we will see what happens this weekend.

[Praz]

Hello

You're welcome. 🙂

[Conners]

+1 on using rufus