One for the Tech experts- Win 11 and nvme drives.

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It isn't actually a problem, but I'd like to know what is happening.

EDITED (x2) to stick to the point

If I take an nvme system disk out of a working Win 11 (pro 24h2) machine and put it into a USB caddy, then connect the caddy to a different machine, the disk is uninitialised.

If I put this nvme disk straight onto the PCI bus of a third PC with a PCI adaptor card (in the x16 slot or x4 slot) as a secondary disk, it is still uninitialised.

Putting it back in the donor system as primary disk it boots and all the partitions are there.

Bitlocker is disabled, but secure boot is on.

I have tried this with two perfectly working nvme boot drives from different machines (one 24h2 one 22h2) with the same result.

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A different nvme disk that has just been initialised and formatted as an NTFS secondary (non-sytem/boot disk) with files on works just fine in the caddy or nvme to PCI adaptor in the x4 or x16 slot

So the question is- what is going on?

SATA system disks just work in caddys and show up as multiple drives, why don't nvme? Is it a Win 11 thing, or an nvme thing? (I've only tried win 10 m2 SATA system disks)

I know that cloning software gives the clone the same serial number so that windows can't mount the original and the clone on the same system, but these are different systems.

Vitor

The M.2 device can be confusing due to support for the old SATA protocol and/or NVMe using PCIe interface. The 'B' and 'M' keys on the interface card show which they'll support.

It's possible an M.2 device initialised in a SATA caddy won't show up in an laptop's M.2 slot until you enable SATA support in the BIOS (assuming that's possible and the M.2 slot isn't PCIe only)

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The B vs M key thing is just because the laptop has an empty B key slot that connects to the PCI bus, so it could be used with a B&M key nvme drive, it isn't relevant to my observation that the nvme drive seems to be un-initialised when it is put into a pc other than the one that created the partitions.

(It was only relevant to not being able to clone the drive)

PHK

The way your post is written is a bit confusing. 

Do you mean:

When I take a drive out of a machine, it shows as uninitialised when I  use a caddy or if I use it on another machine. This happens with two drives from different machines. 

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PHK said:

The way your post is written is a bit confusing. 

Do you mean:

When I take a drive out of a machine, it shows as uninitialised when I  use a caddy or if I use it on another machine. This happens with two drives from different machines. 

Yes, I edited the first post again.  In one sentence

Why does an nvme drive that is a win 11 system/boot drive appear as uninitialised when added as a secondary disk to a different working win 11 system?

jshm2

What is the make and model of the SSD? 

Some models only work with certain conditions, and will not work otherwise. 

Also, check if the disk is being seen in diskpart. 

Olinda99

did you turned off device encryption before you removed it? (settings / privacy and security)

Vitor

Have you tried installing Linux Mint?

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In The Grand Scheme, I don't really care why this happens, I've installed a fresh version of Win 11 and am laboriously installing and setting it up.

It would have been great if it had worked, of course now I've remembered that I could have used the Crucial software to clone Samsung drives ans long as there is a Crucial drive on the system, but ho-hum...

It would be nice to know what is going on, but I'm not overly worried.

Yes bitlocker & all drive encryption is off, and the drive shows up in diskpart, along with its partitions. It is probably a quirk of Win 11 mounting disks, or the broken file manager.

(Apparently, me and one other person on the forums are the only people in the entire world who can read War & Peace while waiting for file manager to spool up every single sleeping drive when I just wanted to open a window on the main SSD, and regularly experience file manager locking up & crashing....)