M.2 Boot Drive - Which Slot?

[Barryng]

I got my new build up and running using an Asus Prime Z490-A. I am using two M.2 NVMe drives and no SATA drives except for a CD/DVD. The boot drive (Windows 10) is a 512 Gb Samsung N.2 970 Pro and it is installed in M.2-1. I have a 1 Tb Samsung M.2 970 EVO for storage only in M.2-2.

I noticed the bios Boot Priority list shows the boot drive 970 Pro in M.2_1 as "P2:ATAPI IHBS112 2" and the storage only drive 970 EVO in M.2_2 as "M.2_2: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB".

A major goal is to boot off an NVMe drive for speed but it appears it is being used as a slower ATAPI device. Should the boot drive be in M.2_2 and the storage only be in M.2_1? The Asus manual is not clear on this point.

For what ever its worth, the 970 Pro in M.2_1 was the only installed drive when I clean installed W10.

 

[Barryng]

Just figured a little more out.

"P2:ATAPI IHBS112 2" references the CD/DVD drive which, of course, can contain boot media. I disabled that as a boot device and now only have the 970 Pro in M.2_1 on the boot Priority list. The 970 EVO in M.2_2 is not even appearing now.

I did experiment and switched the locations for the 970 Pro and EVO and could discern no difference in time to boot to the W10 desk top.

 

[trents]

If the boot times are no different then I think you answered your own question.