M.2 Missing

[ScottAD]

So I was able to install Windows on to the M.2 in the B350 Tomahawk motherboard from MSI.

I updated a few drivers and now the M.2 is gone and the mobo shows BOOT EZ Debug LED is on.

Any clues what could have caused this?

 

[deustroop]

read the manual ?

 

[ScottAD]

Of course I read the manual...

I went over it a second time this morning.

 

[Malogeek]

Running the latest BIOS? Have you reset to default BIOS settings?

On the original BIOS for my Asus Prime X370 my m.2 would disappear on every restart. It required a cold boot to detect. It was resolved after the first BIOS update though.

 

[ScottAD]

Running the latest BIOS? Have you reset to default BIOS settings?

On the original BIOS for my Asus Prime X370 my m.2 would disappear on every restart. It required a cold boot to detect. It was resolved after the first BIOS update though.

Yep running the latest... Not sure greatest haha.

I have not cleared CMOS but will when I get home.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah clear CMOS. I get that a lot on my Taichi (different board, I admit) when I do stupid stuff like try unstable RAM settings. Sometimes the damn NVMe drive just vanishes.

Really annoying.

 

[ScottAD]

Yeah clear CMOS. I get that a lot on my Taichi (different board, I admit) when I do stupid stuff like try unstable RAM settings. Sometimes the damn NVMe drive just vanishes.

Really annoying.

It is an interesting issue. I released bios and it hasn't disappeared since but on MSI uefi there is a Board Manager...still shows nothing in the slot. Boots to Windows at least!

 

[ScottAD]

So MSI gave me a Beta version of their BIOS to try. Prior to that I went ahead and removed my GPU then re-seated the M.2 drive just to make sure. I reproduced the issue.

Installed the new BIOS. Problem persists. Granted I know these boards are young but I can reproduce the problem easily. The issue is only on a warm boot such as restarting. Cold boots work fine.

I installed AMD's new chip drivers to see if there was improvement to be gained from there. No dice.

Seriously considering sending this back and picking up something else.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Losing your boot drive is a scary prospect when you need it the most.

 

[azasadny]

This happened to me a few months ago on a ASUS board (Z170 Pro) and I swapped it for another board...

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Did anyone suspect that a BIOS setting was amiss?

I'm not familiar with "B350," while asasadny refers to his Z170 Pro. My Z170 board has a setting with the options [M.2][SATA_Express_1] in "SATA Mode Configuration." SATA Express 1 consists of two SATA ports and a third connection for SATA Express drives, to be used simultaneously. Otherwise, the SATA ports function as Ports 0 and 1 for regular SATA devices. As I understand it, in "M.2" mode, the M.2 NVMe drive is supposed to share bandwidth with the two ports. The very brief "tip" or explanation given in BIOS states that the mode should be set before connecting the M.2 card.

None of this has been very clear, and I myself wanted four SATA ports for the older storage devices. I lose two of six just for enabling the third PCIE slot to run in x4 mode. So I took the clear path, and bought a PCIE expansion card for my NVMe M.2 drive.

I am just wondering if the nexus of the OP's problem and its causes have something to do with this.

And ALSO -- if someone confident of their understanding wishes to further clarify what is necessary and what are the limitations of connecting an NVMe drive to the motherboard slot, someone familiar with these mid-range Z170 boards, your wisdom will not be lost on me, and I will be grateful.

 

[ScottAD]

@BonzaiDuck

I had the time to actually dig in and this is what I ended up doing to solve my issue.

I disabled all other boot options but the UEFI NVMe and now it is not a problem!

 

[IEC]

That's definitely a BIOS problem then. I'd send that feedback in to MSI so they can fix it.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Damn, having the same problem with ASRock X370 Professional Gaming and MyDigitalSSD BPX 240GB NVME M.2 drive. Fresh windows install would go unresponsive (black screen), upon reboot the M.2 drive would be missing from the BIOS. Power off, power on and everything is well again, however I'd see stornmve driver errors in the windows event log. WTF. Really hoping it's not a hardware problem. Updated BIOS to 2.30 and followed ScottAD advice on the boot options. Will see if I get any issues couple of days later. Damn frustrating.

 

[DrMrLordX]

My first question is, what caused Windows to go unresponsive? I get the same problem when I try a memory or bclk OC which is unstable on my Taichi. Once it crashes, the NVMe drive disappears. Reset CMOS, bam, drive reappears.

 

[fleshconsumed]

In my case I have no idea what caused windows to black screen on me. I don't overclock my systems, Overall system stability is much more important to me than 10-15% performance boost. I got two 2x16GB ECC Unbuffered Kingston sticks rated at 2400 and running at that speed. No intentional overclocking on my part.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm. I would look at memory stability first. Have you done any testing in that regard?

 

[DaveSimmons]

My new Acer Aspire prebuilt that work bought for me had the drive disappear too, sigh. No joy with cold and warm boots over a couple of days. This is an i7-7700 non-K on an Acer motherboard but I'm not sure of the chipset. It waited 6 weeks to do this so we'll need to RMA it instead of exchanging it, sigh #2.

I verified the intel 600p drive is fine using a PCI-e x4 adapter in another PC, and putting the drive back into the Acer didn't fix it.

I'm now of the opinion that NVME is still bleeding edge compared to good old reliable SATA III.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm now of the opinion that NVME is still bleeding edge compared to good old reliable SATA III.

Yep, pretty-much. Along with thermal limits / throttling, like we've never seen with SATA.

I was having issues with one of my DeskMini H110 rigs, and an Adata XPG SU8000 3D MLC M.2 PCI-E NVMe 128GB drive. I was leaving the PC running (Windows 10, so it might reboot due to automatic updates), and sometimes I was coming back to the PC, and it had booted Linux, which is the default OS on my secondary SATA6G 2.5" SSD in that box, that would be the logical drive to boot off of, if it can't find my NVMe SU8000 M.2 drive, which is set as the default boot option in the UEFI.

Although, I found out later than the UPS it was plugged into, had a failing battery.

Just for S&G, I'll try waking up that machine after a few days in sleep mode, see what that gets me.

Edit: Apparently, I'm suffering with a similar issue with this particular DeskMini box. (My other DeskMini does NOT have an M.2 PCI-E SSD, just a 2.5" SATA SSD.)

I went to the machine, and the HDD light on the front was blinking in a regular, repeatable pattern (but no error counts, just repeated blinking). I turned the monitor on, moved the mouse, hit the keyboard, no video output.

I forced shutdown, then powered up again, and it booted right up into Windows 10. So whatever it was, it's not currently happening.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Well, looks like stornvme error I'm getting is "normal"/specific to phison e7 controllers and stornvme driver. There are other people with Z170 ASrock and MSI motherboards getting the same error.

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...ller-deviceraidport0?forum=win10itprohardware