I have an Asus P9X79 LE motherboard with a 3960X CPU and would like to do a fresh install of Windows 7 on a Samsung 960 PRO PCIe NVMe drive using a PCI Express to M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter. I know Windows 7 does not have native support for NVMe but I have Samsung NVMe drivers for use during an install. Or another option would be to install the drive as a secondary one then install drivers, then clone the OS to the NVMe and try to boot to that. I guess my main question is, will the P9X79 LE support NVMe as a boot drive? Thanks.

You need to make up to date installation media with storage controllers, NVMe and USB 3.0 support. I demonstrate the procedure here:

Note you may want to add the Samsung drivers to the Drivers folder (assuming the are extracted properly i.e. are not .exes).

hello,

There is a special tool created by polish guy that allows to integrate automatically all necessary win7 drivers (nvme, Lan, graphic card,....) and updates into the iso and create a new iso with all the integrated stuff without the need of doing anything. If you are interested, let me know and i will send it to you.

Edited April 8, 20186 yr by mehdibleu

Thanks, I'd like to take a look at that

To integrate the NVMe-driver in the installation-media is not enough!

If your BIOS does not support to boot from a PCIe-drive, you have only two possibility:

1) modding the BIOS to insert a NVMe-module

2) to use the clover-system to boot.

Both methods can you find on win-raid.com.

Direkt link for point 2): https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f50-Guide-NVMe-boot-without-modding-your-UEFI-BIOS-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

I'm using this way on an ASUS MB A88X-Pro without any issues.

Edited April 8, 20186 yr by Thiersee