How to Install a NVMe SSD Into Any PC Without an M.2 Slot

In this video I will show you how to install an NVMe SSD into a computer that does not have an M.2 Socket/Slot. We will use an NVMe to PCIe adapter to do this. This is a great way to speed up an older computer. This video will also cover how to boot into this SSD if your computer does not support booting to PCIe drives.

This video is for educational purposes. I'm not responsible for any damages! Follow at your own risk!

Timestamps:

0:00 - Intro
0:12 - NVMe to PCIe adapter
0:39 - Install SSD into PCIe adapter
1:45 - Install NVMe to PCIe adapter into PC
3:02 - Install Windows onto SSD
5:03 - Why you might not be able to boot into the SSD
5:37 - Create a Clover bootable USB
8:53 - Booting to SSD / Windows through Clover
11:15 - Outro

Music:

Song: Autumn

Song: To The Lights

[georgecolacicco]

Excellent! If only a fraction of the legion of YouTube "explainers" could be as clear and thorough and succint as this man, we'd watch only ONE video and get thing done (correctly) the first time!

[chrisschembari]

Good video, and the USB bootloader workaround was obviously a clever solution.

If you were already planning to install a SATA SSD, I don't understand why you would bother with the Clover solution. As long as you install that SATA drive before you attempt to install Windows, I'm pretty sure that the Windows installer will prompt you to specify a small boot partition (NTFS, anywhere from 10 to 200 MB) on the first bootable drive whenever you try to install C:\ on some other storage drive that's not the first in your boot order. It happened to me once; but that was many years ago, so unfortunately the details ("Was it XP?") are a little foggy at the moment.

[axtelnemeth]

Thanks for the video. explains perfectly how to install clover, I couldn't get clover to work until your video 🙂The part about installing the nvmExpressDxe.efi driver into the other two files was the part I was missing Now I am hoping up all my old gaming computers! What a difference! thank you

[walter_lesaulnier]

If someone is considering one of these cards that can take 2 or more NVMe drives, they need to be very sure that their motherboard is capable of bifurcation of the PCIe slot. If not, then to use a card with more than one drive will require a much more expensive card with bifurcation built in. And Clover is awesome.

[chrisschembari]

Tip: If you want to use a flash drive like this and your PC has an unused USB header (a set of pins), you can buy a set of USB internal wires with a USB Type A socket on one end, and attach a USB flash drive inside the case, secured with a Velcro strap, a zip tie or whatever so that the drive doesn't rattle around in the case.

I once had an HP Pavilion desktop back in the days of Windows Me, and I considered doing this for extra storage — though I had no plans to boot from that flash drive.

[asterius]

Hell yeah the howtoguy back at with another tutorial 💪

[davesmith]

Thank you for this, I have just tried this yesterday but without clover. My motherboard is about ten years old, yes I should buy a new one! I will definitely try Clover as I think it could well iron out some problems with dual booting Linux and windows 10. I am using a 4th gen i7 4790K, it’s fast enough but so old!
Incidentally windows could see the drive but not at boot up as the NVME drive did not show in bios for obvious reasons. Thanks again!

[bombthebass]

Cheers. Got there in the end must of watched the vid 20 times. 😂 Just be sure to put the nvme files in both folders i was wondering why the drive didn't show up 🤦

[edw]

Great video, you forgot one thing. You have to disable secure boot in bios, otherwise clover won, t boot Windows from her bootloader. If you use the Boot utility disk software you only have to click on format and the software does the rest for you beside copy and paste the drivers you need. In that case You dont have to use rufus.

[vishalsahu]

I have m.2 slot in my motherboard but still i am watching your video 😂
love from india 🙏

[Hugo-fblt]

Hey, you're saving Christmas this year, it worked after 8h straight trying to figure out what to do. Ive got one last question, can i remove the USB device v´from my PC or do I have to leave it there forever?
Happy Christmas yall

[steviejanssen]

Great video, I have an old HP 8300 SFF and an NVME drive from a previous upgrade lying around, definitely going to try this. I´m going to see if I can install Clover on a SATA SSD instead of a USB thumb drive tho, which then I can use as extra storage whilst getting rid of the error and the extra drive.

[march]

Thanks bhai for your knowledge and time, is it safe and durable??

[edw]

You also can configure the plist file in clover to speed up 5seconds waiting time till 1 second and last one, with partitition tools you can hide the usb station in my computer

[trichert]

Older motherboards do not boot from NVME. You need to add some code to uefi bios.

[olzzon]

I have an old hp xeon workstation with win 10 but going to install a custom rom win 11 to be able to use win 11 and future proof the old system som my question is, will this work even on win 11 since you're using win 10 on yours ? 🙏🏻

[shyamyenagandula]

Genuine Question:
I want to boot windows from my M.2 SATA SSD not NVMe SSD. I've tried every single step mentioned but couldn't boot from it (M.2 SATA not NVMe)
Any suggestions?

[ericfranklin]

cant find the ISO image. None of the current versions have iso.

[TheResendiz]

Will this affect performance since it’s using an adapter???

[derekwilson]

MICRO usb 4gb. only sticks out 5/6mm. buy a coloured one. differentiate between clover boot drive and keyboard/ mouse dongles. ps if i have windows on a ssd, can i just clone to m.2.