Windows 10 on 970 evo m.2 PCI-e SSD

[t8er8]

Hi,

So I have my Windows 10 boot drive on a 240gig sata ssd, and I have my Mac boot drive as the 970evo 500gig in a pcie slot with an adapter.

I find myself staying on Windows a lot more for certain programs I need and the occasional gaming.

I want to migrate my windows boot drive from my sata SSD to my PCI-e SSD, and if possible, put MacOS on the sata SSD. Can I boot properly into Windows 10 on the PCI-e SSD and switch back to macOS when needed? If so, is there anything I need to do beforehand?

Any tools/tips for migrating the drives would also be very helpful.

I'm trying to avoid wiping either drive without a clone

bootROM 140.0.0.0
RX580
Xeon x5680
970 evo 500GB (APFS MacOS Mojave 10.14.4)
Lycom DT-120
Kingston SSD (Windows 10)
2x1TB hard drive (RAID0 NTFS)

Thanks,

 

[tsialex]

Your idea is seriously problematic:

1. Windows 10 only boot from NVMe drives with UEFI installs.
2. UEFI Windows installs require UEFI v2.3.1c.
3. Mac Pro 5.1 is not UEFI, but EFI and an ancient one, EFI v1.10.
4. Windows 10 installed via UEFI mode running in a Mac Pro causes constant re-signing of the Mac Pro SPI, the SecureBoot certificates inside the NVRAM volume, this is one of the causes of the constant bricking of Mac Pros. MP5,1 EFI was never intended to work with UEFI Windows, just CSM.
5. BootCamp assistant won't work if you use an UEFI install, you will need to reset the NVRAM every time you want to go to macOS.

It's not worth the risk, while some people never had the problem, every week someone asks helps to un-brick MP5,1s.

If you want to go for this anyway, you will have to do a clean UEFI install from a USB key to a SATA drive, then clone it to the NVMe drive, since Windows don't install to external drives.

 

[t8er8]

Your idea is seriously problematic:

1. Windows 10 only boot from NVMe drives with UEFI installs.
2. UEFI Windows installs require UEFI v2.3.1c.
3. Mac Pro 5.1 is not UEFI, but EFI and an ancient one, EFI v1.10.
4. Windows 10 installed via UEFI mode running in a Mac Pro causes constant re-signing of the Mac Pro SPI, the SecureBoot certificates inside the NVRAM volume, this is one of the causes of the constant bricking of Mac Pros. MP5,1 EFI was never intended to work with UEFI Windows, just CSM.
5. BootCamp assistant won't work if you use an UEFI install, you will need to reset the NVRAM every time you want to go to macOS.

It's not worth the risk, while some people never had the problem, every week someone asks helps to un-brick MP5,1s.

If you want to go for this anyway, you will have to do a clean UEFI install from a USB key to a SATA drive, then clone it to the NVMe drive, since Windows don't install to external drives.

Ah I was forgetting about UEFI and EFI conflicts, thanks for clearing it up tsialex, I'll just forget the idea.

 

[t8er8]

Your idea is seriously problematic:

1. Windows 10 only boot from NVMe drives with UEFI installs.
2. UEFI Windows installs require UEFI v2.3.1c.
3. Mac Pro 5.1 is not UEFI, but EFI and an ancient one, EFI v1.10.
4. Windows 10 installed via UEFI mode running in a Mac Pro causes constant re-signing of the Mac Pro SPI, the SecureBoot certificates inside the NVRAM volume, this is one of the causes of the constant bricking of Mac Pros. MP5,1 EFI was never intended to work with UEFI Windows, just CSM.
5. BootCamp assistant won't work if you use an UEFI install, you will need to reset the NVRAM every time you want to go to macOS.

It's not worth the risk, while some people never had the problem, every week someone asks helps to un-brick MP5,1s.

If you want to go for this anyway, you will have to do a clean UEFI install from a USB key to a SATA drive, then clone it to the NVMe drive, since Windows don't install to external drives.

sorry about the late reply, but can I partition this nvme apfs boot drive off to be compatible for storage with Windows 10?

 

[tsialex]

sorry about the late reply, but can I partition this nvme apfs boot drive off to be compatible for storage with Windows 10?

I never tried this scenario, but nothing blocking it from working comes to mind.

For MP5,1 and legacy W10 installed with a SATA disk this could work with an exFAT secondary partition in the NVMe drive.

Windows and GPT FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Windows and GPT.

docs.microsoft.com

Btw, with MP6,1 there are lots of reports that you can't change the internal SSD to an NVMe drive and partition it to APFS and NTFS, you will have KPs with macOS.

 

[t8er8]

I never tried this scenario, but nothing blocking it from working comes to mind.

For MP5,1 and legacy W10 installed with a SATA disk this could work with an exFAT secondary partition in the NVMe drive.

Windows and GPT FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Windows and GPT.

docs.microsoft.com

Btw, with MP6,1 there are lots of reports that you can't change the internal SSD to an NVMe drive and partition it to APFS and NTFS, you will have KPs with macOS.

Thanks for the info, ill give it a shot with exFAT