[SOLVED] ASUS ROG Zephyrus second M.2 SSD randomly disappears

[Minaz]

I bought a new ASUS ROG Zephyrus Model GU603ZW. It comes with a 1TB M.2 SSD, and I added a second 4TB M.2 SSD (PNY XLR8 4TB M.2 NVMe Gen 4x4) right away since I knew that 1TB would not be sufficient for my storage needs.

Right from the beginning, after adding the second M.2, I noticed that the BIOS did not detect the M.2. Since this was a new laptop at the time, I went through the troubleshooting steps (checking BIOS, checking the fit of the M.2 in its slot, rebooting, etc...). Google suggested that what worked for some people was simply making sure the M.2 was properly seated, which I did. After some fiddling, the M.2 was detected, and I was able to format and check the drive with no errors. But right off the bat, I noticed that the M.2 drive would still sometimes randomly disappear. I suspected seating issues again, so again I would open the cover and re-seat the M.2 (if you know this laptop, you would know this is a real pain to do each time btw due to the large number of screws not all of which are the same size), but after much fiddling it seemed that everything was stable for a bit so I carefully put everything back and hoped this was the last I saw of this problem. But of course it was not.

Now the second M.2 drive would usually show up on boot maybe 80-90% of the time, but if not, it would show up if I reboot the laptop. This was a far less than ideal situation, but I thought maybe I could make it work, since the disappearing M.2 drive problem only occurred seldomly. Then today, while I was installing a game onto the second M.2, the drive disappeared mid-installation. Rebooting the laptop made the drive appear again, and I was able to complete the installation, but of course it is impossible to ignore the problem given the fact it randomly disconnects while in use (this is the first time I noticed this).

I tried calling ASUS technical support but out of 3 times, only got through once and the call was disconnected mid-call (they said they would call me back but never did). The other two times the call disconnected after being on hold for an extended period.
I am wondering what I can do to try to solve this problem? This is a brand-new top-of-the-line laptop so I am understandably very concerned.

I use Windows 11, and the BIOS has been updated and is in the default settings.

EDIT: okay I just got off the phone with technical support, and it turns out that my BIOS was actually not the latest version, I had version 608, so they had me update it to 610. That was the extent of the troubleshooting that they did so now I am hoping that it fixed the problem, but I am not overly optimistic.

Thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'd be at least somewhat optimistic, because BIOS updates fix a moderately high number of problems these days especially where poor compatibility or support of newer hardware is concerned.

That would have been my first piece of advice as well. The next piece of advice would be to not rely on any Windows native drivers. Go to the product page for your motherboard and make sure you have the MOST recent drivers offered there for the chipset (.inf), audio chipset and network adapters (LAN/WiFi) and if you don't or if you are unsure, then download the latest drivers from the motherboard product support page and install them.

If after updating the BIOS and making sure the drivers are all up to date you continue to have this problem then I'd be very inclined to think it was a bad drive, which wouldn't be entirely a surprise given PNY's propensity for selling cheap components aside from some of their workstation graphics cards which are generally good quality, and some of their OEM style memory products. Some have a different opinion of PNY but to me, aside from their Quadro and RTX workstation graphics cards, they are a very cheap, budget quality manufacturer and I've run into more than my fair share of problems with their cheaper consumer lines.

But, it could just as well be a faulty storage controller on the motherboard or a problem with power delivery on the M.2 circuit. But a bad drive would be my bet if the BIOS update doesn't fix it.

 

[Minaz]

Unfortunately the problem resurfaced even after the BIOS update. However, I have a crazy thought. The next time the drive disappeared was right after I noticed that the Windows 11 "core isolation memory integrity" feature was turned off (there is a yellow exclamation mark in the Windows Security icon on the taskbar to remind you that its off) and turned it back on. The drive was missing on the next reboot, and I ran a few hard drive checks and rebooted, whereupon the drive re-appeared (as expected, this is the normal behavior) and the memory integrity feature was turned off again. I wonder if there is any chance that enabling this feature might have caused the M.2 SSD to disappear?

Since this problem is so hard to reproduce - as far as I can tell, its almost completely random - I am having a hard time testing it to find out if its the root cause. The best I could do was to reboot the laptop a dozen or so times because it the past rebooting sometimes causes the drive to disappear, but so far it hasn't happened after leaving memory integrity off. I am totally grasping at straws and I am aware that the problem might re-occur at any moment, and that's why I ask whether theoretically this is a possible thing to consider? (The only thing that gives me pause is that during the initial installation of the M.2 drive, I had trouble getting it to be recognized by BIOS at all until I tried to more securely fit the drive in the socket. But I suppose that could have been a separate issue.)

 

[Darkbreeze]

Honestly, I doubt it. While anything is possible, this seems like the kind of thing that if it WAS a thing, would be a lot more prevalent and we'd have been hearing about it from all kinds of feral, ranting users.

Personally I'd RMA the drive or return it. Probably I'd return it as faulty and go with something that isn't a PNY product. Samsung, Crucial, SK Hynix, Western digital, Seagate, Corsair and some of the Teamgroup products (But you have to be very careful here and read professional reviews as Teamgroup has some really good products and some EXTREMELY low quality products as well.) are the brands I generally trust to have better quality storage device products.

The only thing PNY sells that I'd trust offhand is their workstation graphics cards. The rest is generally cheap-ish budget gear. Not saying they have no other quality products, I just don't explicitly trust them in that regard. Seen too many problems with PNY products for that.

 

[Minaz]

I thought I'd update this post. First, Darkbreeze is absolutely correct, the problem resurfaced. There are in fact several scattered posts around the Internet about second M.2 SSDs disappearing on various ASUS laptops, but its hard to know sample size and prevalence. The reason I am making this new post is several people have reached out to me saying they have encountered the same problem.

ASUS tech support is no help.

One thing that I've just recently tried, and no idea if it will work yet, is to turn off Intel VMD in the BIOS. It may have some effect, but considering how hard it is to reproduce a drive randomly disappearing. I won't know if its fixed until/unless it happens again. If I don't respond to this post or update it, then the problem hasn't resurfaced.

If you do share your experiences, please let me know if there is any reliable indicator of when a disappearance is more likely to occur, and if you have found any solution to work.

Update: so unfortunately, the changing the VMD setting did not seem to fix the problem.

 

[Darkbreeze]

ASUS tech support is no help.

Not many things in life anymore that I'm completely sure about, but this, for sure, is one of them.

 

[Minaz]

Okay its been just over two weeks since I posted here, but that's because that's how long it took for any development in this issue. I have been working with another person who had a similar issue to see how best to solve this problem. This is where we are at so far.

Since the last time I posted, I have tried disabling Intel VMD. No dice - although it seemed to work at first, the hard drive ended up disappearing again in a few days. Then I updated all the drivers using a driver updater. I understand there is some controversy with these tools, but I seldom manage to find all the updated drivers on my own, and well I figure at this point what do I have to lose? After the driver update, I was actually optimistic that the problem might have been fixed, and for TWO WEEKS there was not a single problem from the SSD. I did a bunch of installations, and left the laptop running 24/7, and not once did the SSD disappear. And then, tonight it did. As usual, a reboot brought the SSD back up. So sadly, it seems that this was again not the answer. The hardest thing about this issue is just how hard it is to troubleshoot a problem that can take half a month to resurface. I could try something now, and it could be November before I realize it didn't work, and months before I could be sure the problem is fixed.

As I mentioned, I am working with another guy who tried a different approach. He contacted ASUS and they told him that the laptop was only compatible with Micron and Samsung SSDs. I was a bit incredulous at this, but the other guy said it fixed his problem, so that's my next step. As always, I'll update with any success or failure stories.
If anyone still reading this has a clue as to what is going on here, please do share, as this has me quite mystified at this point.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I seldom manage to find all the updated drivers on my own

People say this all the time and the answer is always the same, for me, which is "then you don't understand how to go about getting drivers".

Drivers for ANY motherboard model are always available on the product support page for that motherboard. THOSE are the drivers that should be used UNLESS it is an AMD or Intel chipset driver and AMD or Intel have a newer driver for that chipset available on their website. That goes for ALL aftermarket boards and the majority of OEM boards that come in prebuilt systems. Some prebuilt systems don't have a specific "motherboard" support page, so you have to source the drivers from the support page for the actual model of your laptop or prebuilt machine. IF there are no updated drivers for whatever you are looking for them for (chipset, audio, network adapter, etc.) on the support pages for a given OS version then you're going to have to hope that Microsoft is supplying one natively through Windows update but that will generally be a plain vanilla driver that "works" but may not be full featured so you only want to resort to using the MS supplied driver if there is no OS specific driver version available for whatever it is you're wanting drivers for unless there is no driver available from the motherboard or prebuilt system manufacturer.

That goes for other types of components as well such as keyboards, mice and non-graphics expansion cards. For graphics cards, obviously you pretty much always want to be getting those directly from AMD or Nvidia, and now, Intel as well. (If anybody ever is able or willing to buy one.)

Anyplace other than those places, some obscure Russian "driver site", or "automatic driver update utilities" are notoriously questionable at best, outright malicious in many cases.

And then in other cases, if neither the manufacturer nor Microsoft has drivers available for the OS version you are trying to run, then your device is simply too old for that OS version and you need to simply accept that you will have to stick with an older OS version or, preferably, upgrade to a newer machine. Using un-official drivers from anyplace other than the manufacturer or Microsoft, except in VERY FEW instances like when (Rarely) you have a situation like Realtek onboard device but no suitable driver from the motherboard manufacturer or Microsoft, and instead you are able to source one directly from Realtek who in THIS kind of case might loosely be considered the manufacturer but you have to be careful because often these kinds of devices are customized by the board or system manufacturer and won't always necessarily work properly with generic drivers from the component manufacturer.

As to the "brand specific" compatibility with SSDs, that's utter nonsense. Never heard of that, ever. Ever, ever, ever. Whoever he spoke to at ASUS is full of crap and I'll tell them that personally if ASUS support would care to have a discussion about it. Every SSD manufacturer has a variety of different drives, various SSD models, various SATA SSD models, various PCIe and NVME SSD models, and basically every different model or series uses a different or variation of whatever controller is in that drive, and many drives from completely different manufacturers use identical controllers. So if ASUS (Or anybody) wanted to say that a given machine was only compatible with "X" drive, it would need to SPECIFICALLY be dependent on the controller used in that drive, not on the brand name. Complete bullcrap.

And furthermore, ANY manufacturer who sells a product that would ONLY work with specific drive brands would be a company I would be absolutely sure to not buy from or recommend to anybody. Funny that this is ASUS, since they are already high on my $&!+ list for past shenanigans anyhow, both to myself (On multiple, several, occasions) and a variety of other people from this forum, as well as a couple of instances involving other people I know personally in my daily life. Much as I've always been fond in some past years of the quality and features of ASUS motherboards, I will no longer buy them due simply to the ridiculously poor customer service they have been providing (Failing to provide actually) in the last few years.

That's not to say that trying a different drive is a bad idea, only that the idea of it being PURPOSELY engineered that way is worse than rubbish.

 

[Minaz]

Hi, I have to admit when I first heard about the brand-specific thing, I was also incredulous (and said so). I thought they were pulling his leg. But the guy said that he did a test, whereby he swapped his first and second drive slots (so drive 1 went into slot 2 and vice versa), and the same drive crashed. The drive itself worked but somehow not in the ASUS laptop. Then, he put an older M.2 (gen 3) to replace the error drive and it worked fine. Now, this guy laptop loses the drive far more frequently than mine so that he could do this test. Also, in his case, the drive disappears most often under a heavy load, whereas mine is completely random - most of the time it disappears (probably by chance) when the laptop is idle.

I still agree that this hypothesis is a long shot, but right now I have zero leads as to what could be going wrong. I figure if I swap out the drive then at least I can rule out the drive as a possible cause of the problem and in which case the laptop unfortunately would have to be back to the manufacturer.

Oh actually wait I do have one more possible thought. Is there any chance that it is not the BRAND per se that is the problem but the size of the drive? Samsung only makes M.2 drives up to 2TB and maybe this is the reason. Micron does make large drives, but they are impossibly expensive. So perhaps this might point to a possible reason for the $600 PNY 4TB drive I have to be failing in the laptop.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That would not be because of "brand". That would be because of a lack of BIOS support for the capacity of the drive. And yes, it's possible ASUS has failed to provide support for SSDs that large since they are a very recent development, on that laptop.

 

[Minaz]

After further testing, it would appear drive incompatibility was indeed the culprit. It could either have been an issue of the 4TB drive being too large and 2TB being the right size for whatever reason (e.g. BIOS), or it could be as ASUS and one other forum member suggested, and brand-incompatibility issue. I do agree with Darkbreeze this really strains credulity, but since it was reported by ASUS and I have done no controlled testing to prove otherwise, I feel it is worth mentioning here anyway. To be safe, my suggestion to anyone ever facing this problem in the future is to buy a Samsung M.2 drive, which will automatically also solve the 2TB limitation since that is the max capactiy for Samsung (maybe they know something we don't).
I want to thank Darkbreeze and Sunnybaig and all others who helped on this issue, solving it really does feel good!