Laptop is a HP 15-bc018ca (i7) that came with a spinning 2TB drive. This drive is SLOW - it takes almost 10 minutes for all of the background programs to load. These include Reslio Sync, Dropbox, Evernote. Not much else beyond those apps.
I've discovered that the laptop has an internal slot for a M.2 NVMe drive. I want to do a clean install of the most current Windows 10 release (1909) on the new SSD. I will then use the spinning drive as a simple data drive.
First thing was to update the laptop BIOS to the latest available from HP. I didn't bother installing any other updates to the current Windows installation - I want to do a clean install.
I purchased a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD (NVMe M.2) and installed it. Current Windows Disk Manager sees the drive just fine and will let me add partitions at will. However, I deleted all the partitions that I added and have left the entire space as initialised but empty. Best to let the Windows Installer configure the drive as it sees fit.
Used the Windows Media Creation Tool to put the latest Windows 10 v1909 onto a USB drive. I disconnected the spinning drive and booted the laptop. The laptop boots into the USB drive and I am able to start the installer. However, the install routine stops and asks me to supply a missing driver. I'm certain that it is looking for a driver for the NVMe drive.
Spent some time looking - haven't yet found what I need to do.
My next attempt was to use the Samsung Clone utility to copy my current Windows installation and all of the boot stuff to the NVMe drive. This finished successfully. However, upon booting the computer, it is (painfully) obvious that the computer is still booting from the spinning drive. Went into Disk Manager and it shows that the SSD is offline because "The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online". Samsung's disk clone process is just a little TOO perfect!
Disconnected the spinning drive and re-booted the laptop. This thing is FAST! About 10 seconds to the login screen, another 30 seconds until all background programs have loaded.
This sequence of steps has told me that the laptop supports the NVMe drive perfectly. All I need to do is to find out how to add the required driver(s) to the Windows 10 installation files on the USB drive.
I see two possibilities. My preferred path is to add the needed drivers to the Windows 10 Installation USB drive and do a clean install onto the NVMe drive. The spinning drive will be removed for this step. Only after everything was working correctly would I add back the spinning drive and delete the original "C" partition.
The other possibility is to somehow change the drive signature of one drive or the other so that both can co-exist in the same machine at the same time. However, this doesn't give me the clean installation that I want.
The true advantage of updating the Windows 10 USB drive is that it gives me a path forward should something catastrophic happen and I have to do this whole process over again.
[Edit]
I was able to resolve the disk signature conflict problem simply by going into Disk Management, right-clicking on the drive that was off-line, then clicking on "ONLINE". This brought the NVMe drive back online. However, on the next boot, the spinning drive was off-line for the same reason. I simply repeated the procedure (Disk Management -> right-click the off-line drive -> select ONLINE). The laptop now boots correctly with both drives online.
I re-assigned drive letters as appropriate and the laptop now boots from the NVMe drive.
I then ran the W10 v1909 update on the laptop and it ran to completion. The laptop says that it is now on v1909.
However, I still want to get to the bottom of why the laptop would not allow me to do a clean install of v1909 onto the NVMe drive.
I have more information as suggested in the comments:
Running msinfo32 shows that the BIOS is in uefi mode
Disk Management shows that both drives (the original spinning drive as well as the new Samsung NVMe drive) are both formatted GPT.
BIOS says that bios legacy support is Disabled (CSM is disabled)
BIOS says that "Secure Boot" is Enabled
I've just finished backing up the NVMe drive with Acronis (full-disk backup). First, I'll disconnect the spinning drive and ensure the laptop still boots correctly. Then I'll wipe the NVMe drive and attempt the installation from the USB drive again.
Comments and suggestions greatly appreciated!
[Edit 2}
Now that my laptop appeared to be working correctly: booting from the NVMe drive and allowing full access to the spinning drive, I figured that I should play a little bit and try to find out where my problem was. The spinning drive was still disconnected from the previous test (above).
I started by booting the laptop from the W10 Installation USB key. Went through all the steps necessary for a New installation (complete wipe) and told the installer to install into the existing boot partition.
This went well and the booted into a nice, clean, fresh installation of W10 v1909. It's the first time that I've ever heard the Cortana voice!.
Went so far as to get my Bluetooth mouse paired and browsed the Internet a tiny bit. Everything appears to be working correctly.
Okay - let's get a bit more drastic.
Booted the laptop from the W10 install USB key again and went through the same process. This time, however, I wiped all of the partitions from the drive. Confirmed that the entire drive was empty, then told the installer to put Windows into that empty space.
Again - the installer worked flawlessly. I got to listen to Cortana's lovely voice again. Paired my Bluetooth mouse again and ensured that Internet is working correctly.
I now have to assume that user "ramhound" had the problem nailed - my BIOS must not have been set for uefi. What I find astonishing is that it appears that somewhere along the way, software went into the BIOS and changed the setting. I was not aware that was possible.
I'm going to create an answer that summarizes what I beleive was necessary to get the laptop to work with the NVMe drive.
ramhound - please create an answer that mentions ensuring the BIOS is set for uefi so that I can accept it.
