Not recognizing boot device - count your notches

Removed a Samsung MZNLN128HAHQ-000H1 drive from a 3 year old working Intel 8th gen HP laptop that has no other drives. Installed it in Framework. Would not boot. No drive detected. Read the entire thread Crucial P5 M.2 2280 - PCIe Gen3 - No boot device found - Framework Laptop DIY Edition - Framework Community posted by user Mr. Jeeves. My situation is similar. There is no boot device shown. A clean boot using Windows 10 on a USB device was attempted. Window Setup says “We couldn’t find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load Driver.”

Since things were not working as hoped for, it was time to pay very close attention to details and consider a false assumption had been made. The part in question is a Samsung MZNLN128HAHQ-000H1. In case there’s someone else who bought a Thanksgiving special HP laptop from Costco for $300 in 2018 or $280 in 2019, this is for you. Searching for this part reveals it is a 128GB M.2 2280 SATA 6Gb/s SSD. It’s never going to work. Forget loading a driver.

Troubleshooting a drive swap should start with this: Does it have 1 notch or 2? If it has 2 notches, you’re going to have to buy something with 1 notch.

I will not be the only person in history to make this mistake. Then again, I hope I am. Maybe by posting this, no one else will waste their time on this specific problem. Where I went wrong is that I have two of those laptops and one had been upgraded to a Hynix 1 TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0. I took parts from two essentially identical laptops and swapped them into the Framework. One worked, one didn’t. It’s so obvious in hindsight.

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