[SOLVED] After Crucial MX500 failure, my BIOS is not detecting my new SSD?

[accidentalbystander]

Ok, so the MX500 failed (it's a sorry tale involving Win 10 updates, a locked system and a poorly timed forced reboot) which is a shame as it seemed a very competent drive. Doubly so because it was my boot drive! Essentially upon booting it hits the Win 10 blue screen saying the PC/Device has failed with no other options available to me (or ones that would work).

My motherboard is an old Asus M5A78L/USB3 because I am still on an old AM3+ FX8320. I don't believe the motherboard is an issue here, but it might be.
When my MX500 failed it was completely unreadable, so I went to the nearest electronics shop and grabbed the cheapest SSD just to get the OS back up and running and picked up a PNY CS900 and assumed I could just throw it into the box and reinstall Win10.

However, the PNY is not shown in my BIOS. The MX500, when alive, did. I swapped SATA ports but it still didn't recognise the drive. I got Win10 up and running by partitioning enough space in one of my old platter HDs and the PNY is not shown via Disk Management or Device Manager. After all if the BIOS doesn't see it, Windows certainly won't. Now I should be clear, this isn't a case of initialising, formating or allowing visibility, the BIOS simply does not detect it's existence. I have not tried the PNY on another machine because, probably like most, all my other devices are mobile based.

Is my MX500 fine but the motherboard has stopped recognising SSDs?
- this then suggests the MB knows whether a SATA is platter or solid state, which I don't think is the case and the SATA controller just transfers data while the hard drive's own controller deals with how that data is read/written. All my other SATA devices (2 platter HDs, split into lots of partitions, and a DVD drive) are all recognised and working as normal.

Is the PNY CS900 dead?
- it was bought brand new, with the security seals still intact so if it's dead it's dead from the factory.

Does my motherboard support the PNY CS900?
- It recongised the MX500 in the BIOS without needing to make changes (it's an old BIOS so there are few changes that can actually be made!). I know the M5A78L doesn't support M2 SSDs but the PNY doesn't look like an M2 and none of the specs suggest it is, plus M2's are not cheap and this PNY was cheap!

...or is it something completely differnet and blindingly obvious?

Could I just thank anyone who took the time to read this, and my gratitude goes out to any of you who reply.

 

[accidentalbystander]

* bump *

No replies? Shame. I mean I accept that people may be busy but I've always found Tom's Hardware to be pretty helpful in the past.

 

[jsmithepa]

May needs a BIOS update.


*Folks here answering your questions are unpaid hobbyists with day jobs.

 

[accidentalbystander]

May needs a BIOS update.

OK, first off, thanks for the reply. It's not a BIOS update though, and for several reasons. The first being that the board currently has the latest BIOS - you weren't to know that as I didn't add it into the initial comment. Secondly the crucial SSD which failed was working before, and you linked to the crucial site.

My main question was more about why the PNY was not working when it's the same type of drive as the Crucial one was (until it died).

*Folks here answering your questions are unpaid hobbyists with day jobs.

As am I, just saying that in the past it was quite common to get a fairly quick reply. Not sounding needy, just commenting.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

did you try clearing the cmos? test the pny on a different pc

 

[mazooni]

From the sounds of it your crucial SSD is not dead. If all that happened was a Windows update that failed miserably probably just a file system/partitioning issue. Would you like help fixing the crucial SSD and preparing it to install a clean copy of Windows on first or help troubleshooting the PNY SSD. Thanks!

 

[Deathrow Bo Dean]

I hope I can shed some light on this matter. It may or may not help you.

Two weeks ago I began to install Win 10 on a 2007 Gateway Desktop running Vista. I had bought from Best Buy the Win 10 Pro thumb drive and decided to use it for the install. I misplaced it but had the card with the activation numbers so I went to the Microsoft site and downloaded the tnstal tool. I placed the download on a another USB drive and had a brand new Crusial 256 GB SSD available for the Win !0 install.
I began the Win 10 install and went to walk my dog. I returned about 3 hours later and my Win 10 install said "Getting Devices Ready 90%." Thinking that the install would finish soon I left it until I had my diner. When I retrunned to see if it was finished it still said the same "Getting Devices Ready 90%". So I decided to re try the install again and after several attemps i got 85%, 60% and 65% after trying to do the Win 10 install with a Iso placed on a DVD. So I did some searching on the web for a fix for this problem. Finially I found a You Tube post that said that some come computers Power Management thinggys tend to decrease the amount of current to the power harness when it dosen't think there is a Hard Drive or something that needs more juice then a SSD. I dosen't know that the SSD is there because they do require a much power and the larger ATA drives. That I what the post said.
The person that wrote the post a YouTube, said that one could use the CMD terminal to change some of the computers power management settings and was showing how to do this. However, I'm a little intimidated anout messing around with terminal commands and chickened out.
But I did get Win 10 installed by doing it this way.

1. Leave your SSD small data cable connected to you computer and remove only the power connector. Let the data cable stay connected to your computer.
2. Attach the SSD power to an EXTERNAL POWER SOURCE. I have a external IDE to usb tray that I use to test the Large IDE ATA Hard Drives . I conneted a sata adapter to the molllex power connector on the external test tray and plugged it into the SSD. ( Just the power connector no other connections from the external tray ) and started the Win 10 install again.
3. AT this time I still had the DVD in the computer and it started the install . I watched for the part of the install that say's " Getting Devices Ready" and that part only took about 15 seconds, And after about 10 minnets later I had my Win 10 up and running on the Gateway with the 256 GB Crusial SSD.

My friend was having the same trouble with a 256 GB Corsair SSD. He did the same steps that I did and now his system has Win 10 on it.

Therefore I the SSD has another power source that can't be affected my the computer power management thinggy, the external power source will keep it from going to sleep during the Win !0 Install.
I have not read anymore posts so my fix may be already known to everyone but I hope this helps.
DBD