Running Boot Camp/Windows partition on MacbookPro with internal Samsung Evo M.2 SSD

[estrellla]

I replaced the factory SSD on my mid 2014 MacbookPro with a Samsung 970 Evo SSD and installed Big Sur. This works perfectly well. Later I tried to use Boot Camp Assistant to partition the drive and install Windows on the other partition. The Boot Camp Assistant process went as far as to create the bootable USB drive for Windows installation and allowed me to create the Windows partition. Next, instead of automatically restarting into that partition to install Windows as it should have, it restarted into my OSX partition. I tried manually starting up into the Windows partition by holding down 'option' while restarting. This brings up a screen where I am able to select the following discs: Windows, EFI Boot, and my OSX disc (named 'Sight'), but even though I select Windows, the system chimes again and starts up in the OSX partition.

Running

diskutil list

gives:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme            *500.1 GB      disk0

   1:                              EFI ⁨EFI⁩              209.7 MB      disk0s1

   2: Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk1⁩             250.0 GB      disk0s2

   3: Microsoft Basic Data ⁨BOOTCAMP⁩        249.9 GB      disk0s3


/dev/disk1 (synthesized):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      APFS Container Scheme -           +250.0 GB     disk1

                                 Physical Store disk0s2

   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Sight - Data⁩            57.1 GB    disk1s1

   2:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 293.7 MB   disk1s2

   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                610.8 MB   disk1s3

   4:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      1.1 MB     disk1s4

   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Sight⁩                   15.1 GB    disk1s5

   6:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 15.1 GB    disk1s5s1


/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme               *62.1 GB    disk2

   1:     Windows_NTFS ⁨WinInstall⁩              62.1 GB    disk2s1

Another thing: I have been unable to access recovery mode via command-R at startup. Instead holding command-R at startup sends the system into Internet Recovery Mode. So I have been unable to access Startup Security Utility to check or change Secure Boot Settings.

Any ideas on how I might proceed to get a Windows partition up and running on this system?

 

[barbu]

You can’t boot into recovery because your new SSD doesn’t have the recovery partition. This is normal.
Have you tried EFI boot?

 

[estrellla]

Thank you @barbu. That is helpful to know and makes sense.

After doing the following:

• reset the PRAM/NVRAM
• reset SMC
• ran First Aid from Disk Utility
• used Software Update to go from Big Sur 11.5.1 to 11.5.2
• formatted the USB flash drive as MS-DOS(FAT) with Master Boot Record scheme
• unplugged all external devices

I restared the Boot Camp Assistant process and this time it completed. I'm not sure which step fixed the issue.

When restarting with the option key pressed, the two volumes I can choose from are my Mac Volume and one called "EFI Boot" instead of windows.