How to find out if my BIOS supports booting from PCIe nvme?AX1470

gsdd
gsdd Member Posts: 2 New User

I have an older AX1470 that I've installed an M.2 NVME drive via an PCIe adapter. I would really like to put the OS on it and boot from there.

It now has a healthy EFI boot partition on it, but it will not show up in the BIOS boot options.

Disk management can see the drive, as did the OS installer allowing me to install the OS to it, but the one place it does not show up is in the BIOS boot order options.

I have been trying to find solutions to why that might be, but have come up with nothing. All I can think of is the BIOS does not support booting from PCIe.

I've also read that a newer version of my BIOS exists, but there is no option to download it from the Acer Drivers & Manuals section.

The user manual for this PC also makes no mention of relevant information.

Is there any way I can find out if it's even possible for me to boot from PCIe?

[Edited the thread to add model name to the title]

Answers

  • StevenGen
    StevenGen ACE Posts: 12,065 Trailblazer

    The UEFI GUID (GPT) bios does not show the boot order like an MBR/ Legacy bios does, which shows all the drives priorities, all it shows is "Windows Boot Manager" like below. If your AX1470 shows the below in its BIOS > Boot and you are running Win-10 then its perfect and its how it should be. For more drivers go to this link at HelpDrivers as they have 15 files for Acer Aspire X1470 including bios files.

    If this answers your question and solved your query please "Click on Yes" or "Click on Like" if you find my answer useful👍

  • gsdd
    gsdd Member Posts: 2 New User

    Thanks Steven! I'm impressed you found that download page. The site I came across didn't have anything for my model. Now the question is if I want to roll the dice on updating the firmware. It would be nice to see a firmware changelog somewhere to know for sure if an update might introduce PCIe/NVMe boot support.

    The issue I'm having with the boot order is that I have 3 drives installed: 2 SATA drives and 1 NVMe PCIe drive. I have tested with an EFI partition on each of them, but only the SATA drives show up in the BIOS boot order to select from. I have found no way to get the NVMe/PCIe drive to appear in the boot order. Which is what leads me to believe the BIOS does not support it and can not boot from PCIe/NVMe.

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,101 Trailblazer
    edited March 10

    Updated BIOS isn't going to help, any UEFI enabled boot environment will show up in the boot menu with any of the BIOS versions. If the drive on your PCIe NVMe card isn't visible either the drive isn't configured for a UEFI boot environment or the card doesn't support booting (and a lot of the cheaper cards do not).

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.