I just built a new computer using a MSI motherboard (370 series) with a M.2 Solid State Drive. This secret applies other motherboards. I wanted Windows 10 to boot off the M.2 drive, it’s boots much faster that way.
I purchased a copy of Windows 10 on a USB thumb drive from Fry’s Electronics to put on the M.2 drive. The thumb drive was from Microsoft, what could go wrong?
I could not get the computer to boot from the USB drive. I could see the USB drive in Windows file explorer. Many videos on YouTube said not to have another hard drive in the computer when installing Windows 10 onto the M.2 SSD.
I ended up bumming some information from a computer guru that works for a friend. Off the top of his head the guru said to disable fast boot to get the computer to boot off a USB thumb drive. None of the YouTube videos talked about this.
It took some poking around to find the place to turn off the fast boot option. You have to press the del key a bunch of times when the computer starts to boot up to get into the BIOS. Then go to the advanced menu in BIOS. Look for the Boot tab, click it, and in the Boot window scroll down till you find Fast Boot and click it off. The motherboard should come out of the box with fast boot on.
Then you have to go back to the main menu and set the boot order to try and get it to boot off the USB drive first.
I did a lot of google searching and never found anything about fast drive interfering with booting from a USB drive. This is something only those who work a lot with windows know about.
Stay strong, write on.
Professor Hyram Voltage.