Confusion/issues with M2 SSD in newer build. Won't boot anymore.

[Homerboy]

It was 11pm and I have never messed with these new drives (just standard SATA SSDs) so I'm not sure what was going on. (Cripes, could they make that securing screw any smaller?)

Just last night, the machine powered off on its own (per my child). When powered back on it just got stuck at the ASRock MB logo for them.
So I dove into bios, turned off the log screen and started to take a look.

Long story short, it seems the M2 drive (or something) is acting up. On initial boot, the M2 drive will not be seen in the bios. If I power down (pulling the power completely too) then remove the drive from the MB, boot to bios it obviously will still not be seen. But then if I plug the drive back in, reboot the drive will be seen in bios (lists boot options as "Windows partition" or whatever, and Adata 6000 as another option. It SEEMS like it's good to go then. I click save and exit, it reboots, and right back into bios and the M2 is not listed anymore again.

Any ideas? Think the drive is dead? Of course I need to get this fixed ASAP for her and school (and play of course).

Thanks in advance.

 

[UsandThem]

Any ideas? Think the drive is dead? Of course I need to get this fixed ASAP for her and school (and play of course).

Sounds like it.

Does the motherboard have another M.2 slot to test it in (to rule out the M.2 slot being the issue)?

 

[Homerboy]

Sounds like it.

Does the motherboard have another M.2 slot to test it in (to rule out the M.2 slot being the issue)?

Sadly, no. That would be too easy

 

[UsandThem]

If you are able to get the drive to boot into Windows, you can use a utility like this to see its health (Crystal DIsk Info).

If you can't, then the smart money (based on your description of the problems) would be the SSD is bad.

 

[Homerboy]

If you are able to get the drive to boot into Windows, you can use a utility like this to see its health (Crystal DIsk Info).

If you can't, then the smart money (based on your description of the problems) would be the SSD is bad.

Yeah - getting it to boot is the problem
I have a replacement on order already that should be here tomorrow. I have Veeam backups so hopefully I can get a restore to work

 

[Amol S.]

Either SSD is bad, a W10 Update caused a OEM BIOS update that went wrong (thus could just be the BIOS). Did you check the SSD somewhere else?

How often is the SSD trimmed?

How old is the laptop. The newer the laptop, the less likely a SSD is going to die. If the laptop is very new, it could be a manufacturers defect.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pretty sure that this is a desktop rig.

Consider connecting a SATA drive (SSD?), and then install a fresh copy of Windows 10 (using Media Creation Tool USB installer on a flash drive), and setting the SATA SSD to boot, while having the NVMe SSD installed.

I think that's what @UsandThem meant, by "getting it to boot"... "with the drive"... not necessarily booting "from" the drive.

Then you could use CDI (Crystal Disk Info) to see what the stats were on the NVMe drive, while booted into the SATA SSD. IF the NVMe is detected and working at all, that is.