Question Asus P8Z68 cannot get SSD M.2 on PCIE Adapter to install

retiredat44

Junior Member
Aug 29, 2020
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Asus P8Z68 cannot get SSD M.2 on PCIE Adapter to install. I have M.2 SSD, it is an SP M.2 256GB SSD. It worked fine, pulled it out of my other newer motherboard to upgrade the size to larger. I wanted to put it in my older Asus P8Z68 motherboard in another computer with Win10. The P8Z68 does not have the M.2 slot so I put it in a PCIE adapter. No matter what I do, the computer Win10 will not recognize the M.2 SSD on the PCIE adapter. The Asus P8Z68 Gen 3 Pro doe snot have CSM to set in the Bios, and has the latest Bios. yes, it is about 5 years old now, but I should be able to use the PCIE adapter. I have a Sata SSD that I tried with it and no problems. But the PCIE adapter just will not work and I did everything I could using directions of several forums and websites. I have the SP SSD (Silicon Power brand SSD) Tool Box, and it does not see the PCIE M.2 mounted on the PCIE adapter with Win10 either. Anyone have any directions on how to get it to be seen by Windows 10 ? Thanx
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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If that SP m.2 is an NVMe drive, Z68 did not support NVMe. That said, you could possibly get it to work with a modded bios for NVMe suppport. Note this can be difficult and risky.

Also, what exactly do you mean by it does not work? Are you trying to install fresh Windows 10 on the m.2 and use it as a boot device? Or do you already have Windows installed on another drive and just want to use it as a secondary?
 

damian101

Senior member
Aug 11, 2020
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You could probably also move the EFI system partition to a small USB drive and boot from there. Or flash rEFInd to a small USB drive.
 

retiredat44

Junior Member
Aug 29, 2020
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I am booting the asus p8z68 from a hard drive. Was just trying to ass the pcie with ssd, but it will not recognize it no matter what. Like I said, the m.2 ssd was working fine in a newer asus motherboard, and when I upgraded, I wanted to use it in my older asus p8z68 gen 3 pro. Yes, it appears it would never work without getting into the bios, and am not going to risk screwing that up. I thought I would ask, and see if other computer uses had got it working without to much trouble. No big deal, it is what it is. Thanx
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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Yeah it may be too much trouble. Best just to get a good SATA SSD as a boot drive. That should do fine.
 
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Charlie98

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Nov 6, 2011
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I'm still running 2 Z68 boards (and a total of 5 Sandy Bridges...) I've found that KISS is the way to go. We are at the point where tech has left even something as modern as a Z68 in the dust.
 

retiredat44

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Aug 29, 2020
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I don't want to boot from it, just wanted to use it. thanx anyways,,, I know the drive worked as in the m.2 slot in the computer that has m.2 slot, but moved the m.2 ssd into a pcie adapter to use it just as a non booting drive
 

1di9

Junior Member
Jan 15, 2021
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I've just added a new NVMe M.2 SSD Crucial P5 to my P8Z68-V using a PCIe to NVMe adapter, placed in PCIe2.0 x16_3 slot (black) set to 4X in UEFI BIOS and works without any problem, except for USB3.0 3 and 4 ports loss.....
Obvoiusly I cannot use this drive to boot system, and reachig NVMe top speed, but I reach 1630 MB/s of sequential read speed.....3 times faster than SATA SSD.
 

retiredat44

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Aug 29, 2020
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I resolved the issue, used them.2 ssd in a sata case and plug cables, plus the ssd had issues was under warranty.... they are sending me new one. it is not worth much now anyways,, a quality brand 1tb ssd is under $100 nowdays...
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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I resolved the issue, used them.2 ssd in a sata case and plug cables, plus the ssd had issues was under warranty.... they are sending me new one. it is not worth much now anyways,, a quality brand 1tb ssd is under $100 nowdays...
I find comfort in the fact that there are at least a few posters here who still have P8Z68 motherboards. I started with the P8Z68-V Pro board back in 2010 or 2011 with an i7-2600K. Still running fine with 16GB of RAM. I think at some point I lost the motherboard, didn't want to build a new system with new technology at that point but only wanted my system working again. I found an outfit named Ascendtech which has a storefront and acquires corporate IT assets for refurbishing and resale. There were two of thel P8Z68-V-Pro Gen-3 boards available for less than $100 each, so I bought both. One had a broken latch for a RAM module, but the socket was still good. So around 2014, I picked up an i7-2700K and built another.

I just don't know how long the Sandy Bridgers will serve me. That was a very good board, and the gen-3 version was compatible with Ivy Bridge cores. The IB cores gave you PCI-E version 3.

But here are my thoughts about it. That chipset seems a bit too old to waste time and effort trying to configure an NVME. I myself had thought about it and decided it wasn't worth the effort, given the uncertainties. You're best to stick with an SATA SSD boot disk. Z68 is 10-year-old technology.
 

1di9

Junior Member
Jan 15, 2021
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Nothing so uncertain or difficult...
Just buy a Pcie to NVMe adapter, install a ssd nvme on it and plug in PCIe 16 slot. Will be ricognized immediately by Windows 10 and will work with a peak speed of 1600 mb/s.WIth a Ivy Brige CPU that could enable Pcie 3.0 peak speed will beh a lot higher.
Obviously it could be used only as data drive due to impossibility for Z68 chipset to boot without some complicated workaround.
 

ElFenix

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I resolved the issue, used them.2 ssd in a sata case and plug cables, plus the ssd had issues was under warranty.... they are sending me new one. it is not worth much now anyways,, a quality brand 1tb ssd is under $100 nowdays...
if it worked in an sata adapter then it's an sata m.2 drive, not a pcie one, so if your adapter card was a pcie only then that explains it.
 

retiredat44

Junior Member
Aug 29, 2020
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ok, so, I bought a new SSD, sata, and now rely on just Samsung, also trying a new Hynix SSD. My wife likes my older computer with the asus z68, so, she can continue to use it.
I still use an Asus Z170 pro gaming (m.2 ssd), and I see them for sale cheap used. They still perform very well for gaming.
 

1di9

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Jan 15, 2021
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On my P8Z68-V equipped with Core i5-2500K@4,4 Ghz and Radeon rx 570 I play PES 2021, War Thunder and Star Wars Squadron in Full HD and higher level of details.....
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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ok, so, I bought a new SSD, sata, and now rely on just Samsung, also trying a new Hynix SSD. My wife likes my older computer with the asus z68, so, she can continue to use it.
I still use an Asus Z170 pro gaming (m.2 ssd), and I see them for sale cheap used. They still perform very well for gaming.
My threads elsewhere chronicle my current repair project on my Sabertooth Z170 S system. It was such a perfect system before I zapped it with a thoughtless static-charge, that I want to take my goddam time.

The Z170's are four or five-year-old technology, of course. On the other hand, the Comet Lake gen-10 processor has ten cores, and all those cores are basically the same as Skylake.

On the matter of storage though, I'm looking at the low price of 1TB NVME drives, no less those by Samsung. And I see that the newest motherboards are PCIE 4.0 ready.

So the Samsung 980 NVME (Pro or EVO) shows a spec sustained throughput read rate of something close to 7,000 MB/sec -- under PCIE-4.0. But then Anandtech tested them and the difference between PCIE 3.0 and 4.0 is not such a big deal in the bench tests.

So at this point, except for the Optane prospects, we're not missing much. And as for Optane -- well -- you can socket between 32 and 64GB of DDR4 RAM and use a caching program like PrimoCache to achieve the same sort of benefits.

At least, I argue and attest that I can prove it so.
 

Thibs38

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2021
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Hi, I have a M2 ssd scraped from a laptop that died, I have the P8Z68-V motherboard from Asus and I bought on aliexpress a M2 adapter to Pciex1. When plugged in, a green led is emitting light, but no matter what pcie port I use the card is never recognized. I tried the last x16 port and tried x4 or x1 mode as some people suggested but the ssd is never recognized.

Appart from that, I have troubles connecting a wifi card to the motherboard, it was recognized once and now only the first x16 pci slot recognize it (but it throws an error code 10 in the device manager).

I don't know if these two issues are related to each other. Do you have any clues on what is going on or how I can make my pc recognize the ssd?
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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Is it possible the m.2 from the laptop is SATA based, and not PCIe? Also, if you could provide the model of m.2 and adapter, that might help. It is also possible that you just need a BIOS update for the motherboard.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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Hey Thibs, sorry mate, there is no reasonable way to get a typical M.2 SSD to work as a boot drive on Intel 6-series chipsets (viewable by bios or windows setup). I've been down that road.

The best cheap solution is to get a budget SATA SSD and roll that way trouble free, and hold onto the adapter for a future use.

If you want to also make use of the m.2 nVME drive (99% of them are nVME overall, some very early models of m.2 were sata), grab an external USB to nVME mini adapter and you can just leave it attached to a USB 3.0 port. Boot from SATA SSD, and then have extra drive letter from external m.2 to USB adapter.
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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He should be able to still use it as a 2nd drive in Windows, as long as it is paired with the correct adpater. But correct, if he is trying to boot from it or install an OS on it, that will be much more difficult.
 
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Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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He should be able to still use it as a 2nd drive in Windows, as long as it is paired with the correct adpater. But correct, if he is trying to boot from it or install an OS on it, that will be much more difficult.

Aye. It does vary a bit, I had the P8P67 Pro (earlyish variant), and was eventually able to get an nVME drive set up for my brother after trying a couple of adapters, but could never get it to boot from it, despite a lot of effort in different bios versions and so forth. It feels like something that *should* be possible, but it just refuses. I kept the adapters and kept trying different mobos later on from curiosity, and failed with Intel C602, H55, X58, P67, and Z68 stuff, though I eventually found success with Z97 Haswell gen. And that seemed to mark the real separation point.

Sandy and earlier with 6 series chipsets and older, no go.

Sandy and Ivy with 7 series chipsets, might potentially work with certain circumstances and bios update, I never found one that worked from a couple that I tried.

Haswell on 8 series chipsets, never tried.

Haswell and beyond on 9 series chipsets and up = basically a lock.
 

Thibs38

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2021
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Hi guys, I'm not trying to boot from it but to use it as an external drive. The drive is never recognized by windows, the ssd is a M2 SanDisk x600 2280 128GB.
The adapter is a NFHK N-M2X1.

My bios has the last available update.

On the ssd, it is written "SATA 6.00Gbps Rated: 3.3V 2A" does that mean I can plug it on SATA instead? The ssd fits in the SATA cable but I'm scared to fry everything up.
Thanks for your help
 
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Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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Sep 13, 2008
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If it is a SATA m.2 drive, it will need an adapter meant for SATA m.2 drives, not PCIe m.2 drives. These get power from something, either a molex connector, a SATA power connector, or possibly a PCIe slot, and also need a SATA data cable from the adapter to the motherboard. It looks like the adapter you have only works with PCIe based m.2 drives.
 

Thibs38

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2021
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Well the ssd only has a M2 connector, it fits into the adapter I bought and fits into the sata cable too, it was originally plugged in a laptop in the exact same way I plugged it in the adapter.
It looks like this:
Screenshot_20211116_091414.jpg