WD Black NVMe PCIe SSD - Multiple Install Issues

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1

Support Page help file "M.2 Desktop Installation Guide (PDF) "- gets a 404 File not Found Error!
Physically installed WDS256G1X0C anyway.
BIOS finds and identifies the drive with only easily corrected problems.
WIndows 7 finds and identifies the drive as “Device Manager->Other Devices->(!)PCI Device”.
Looking at Samsung and Intel SSD Installation Guides (see note above), they reach this same point and require one of the following two steps;

  1. Run “SetupNVMe.exe” or,
  2. Update “PCI Device” device driver with “NVMe.inf” (or similar).
    Apparently, Win7 does not have NVMe drivers. (unless installed with Hotfix in KB2990941)
    WD SSD Dashboard - 2.0.1.0 only reports “WD SSD not detected” although it does correctly identify the operating system as Win7.
    Unable to find either SetupNVMe.exe or NVMe.inf on WD Support Site

Any suggestions?

2

I was able to fix the problem. Thank You

3

Hello,

Could you please post how you took care of your issue?

This might help other users in the future.

4

I could benefit from this knowledge…
Having issues getting the device to function in W7 with the hotfixes… the device is still looking for a driver.

5

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback on WD Black SSD, please note Windows 7 does not have inbox driver for NVMe devices.

Please check this support article on our website: Internal Drive: Verify a system supports WD Black PCIe Solid State Drives

If you want to use WD Black PCIe SSD on Windows 7 please consult with Microsoft for possible patch/hotfix

6

One would think that WD would either A) point users directly to the available Windows 7 NVMe hotfixes, instead of giving vague replies about contacting Microsoft and/or B) supply a custom driver like Samsung does. The nvme driver that Microsoft supplies is basic and doesn’t fully utilize the features set forth in the latest NVMe standard(s) (1.3).

In any case, the NVMe hotfix packages for Windows 7 can be found here Microsoft KB2990941

It is also recommended to install the KB3087873 hotfix package after installing the above NVMe package.

The actual name of the Microsoft NVMe driver is Stornvme (sys) (inf) and (pnf). Note that the driver cannot be installed directly from the .inf, it must be installed via the package. There are various methods to slip streaming the hotfix packages into a Windows 7 installation so that the nvme will be recognized during the Windows 7 installation.