Question Boot hard drive (m.2) undetected by system after a crash while Windows was sleeping.

[lofemofe]

Newish computer built within the year. No issues with the build, PC has been running fine.

Last week, when I went to check my computer in the morning, the computer showed a blue screen saying it didn’t restart properly. I never initiated a restart, the computer should have been in Sleep Mode.

After restarting, the computer did a Disc Error check during the Mobo Logo screen. After disc check, I restarted and my computers boot (Windows 11 OS drive) was not detected by the system at all. Not in bios nor in windows.

There are 4 hard drives installed on this system, 2 new M.2 drives ( WD black SN770), and 1 SSD (with my old windows 10 install) and another HD for storage.

So my PC was booting from my old Windows 10 drive instead of the new m.2 drive. In Windows 10 I could see that the m.2 hard drive was not being detected, it was also not being detected in Bios.

So I restarted a couple times, did some more check disks in command prompt, and eventually the computer did detect and boot up from the m.2 drive. Thought it had fixed itself.

A week later, same issue. Came to my computer in the morning after it should have been sleeping and it gave me a blue screen saying it failed to restart. And on restart the drives were not detected again. Power cycling the computer finally got it to restart with boot drive detected again.

Now it’s working again, but I really don’t want to have to do this process anymore. Nor have to deal with these issues when my m2 hard drive warranties are up. I don’t know what’s causing my computer to blue screen and improperly restart when I am asleep and the computer should have been sleeping.

I’ve used CrystalDiscInfo and the health of the drive is at 100%. So I’m not sure if this is a case of the drive just failing. Like I said, eventually after some restarts/ power cycling the drive is detected and works as normal again.

Any idea what’s going on here?

 

[Lutfij]

Make and model of your motherboard? BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time? Would also be a good idea to check and see if the SSD's have a firmware update pending.

 

[lofemofe]

Make and model of your motherboard? BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time? Would also be a good idea to check and see if the SSD's have a firmware update pending.

AsRock Steel Legend Z690 Non-Wifi Version

Could only find this in the bios
“UEFI Version: Z690 Steel Legend 6.03”

Is that the Bios version?

I have two WD black M.2 SN770 installed. Both are new and still under warranty. One is used as boot drive (the one that keeps failing) and the other as just a Game Storage drive (hasn’t given me any issue).

Used “wmic disk drive get caption, firmwarerevision” in command prompt and it gave me Firmware Revision: 731100WD for both my drives.

 

[lofemofe]

Make and model of your motherboard? BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time? Would also be a good idea to check and see if the SSD's have a firmware update pending.

To add to my last reply, I downloaded Western Digital Dashboard program just now and it said the firmware is up to date for my SN770 drives. Running a SMART diagnostic on it right now through the dashboard program, no problems being detected.

Really at a loss here as to what’s causing my computer to blue screen and then not detect the drive after restart. Thanks for your help so far though, hoping we can figure out a solution here.

 

[dwd999]

To add to my last reply, I downloaded Western Digital Dashboard program just now and it said the firmware is up to date for my SN770 drives. Running a SMART diagnostic on it right now through the dashboard program, no problems being detected.

Really at a loss here as to what’s causing my computer to blue screen and then not detect the drive after restart. Thanks for your help so far though, hoping we can figure out a solution here.

Random thoughts: why is the computer asleep; I just have the power options set to turn off the display and leave everything else alone. It might also help if you opened up the Task Scheduler and checked to see what it is that the computer may be scheduled to do during the time when its supposed to be asleep. Is it updating itself or performing other maintenance instead of just sleeping?

 

[lofemofe]

Random thoughts: why is the computer asleep; I just have the power options set to turn off the display and leave everything else alone. It might also help if you opened up the Task Scheduler and checked to see what it is that the computer may be scheduled to do during the time when its supposed to be asleep. Is it updating itself or performing other maintenance instead of just sleeping?

It’s a computer with lots of RGB, so I figured letting it sleep would save me some power even if it wasn’t doing anything. In my past build I never slept my computer and it was always running fine.

My computer sleeps when idle for 2 hours. Would task scheduler still show what’s scheduled to be done when computer is sleeping, in that case?

I’m not super familiar with the task scheduler app, do I look under the “Active Tasks” heading to see what tasks I have scheduled? There’s 125 total tasks listed there. I see a bunch under that list, some saying Multiple Triggers, some say Custom Triggers, some saying at a specific time and repeat every 1 hour. I guess some of the times these tasks are supposed to start would happen during night when I assume my computer is asleep. But how do I know which could be causing the crash?

 

[dwd999]

It’s a computer with lots of RGB, so I figured letting it sleep would save me some power even if it wasn’t doing anything. In my past build I never slept my computer and it was always running fine.

My computer sleeps when idle for 2 hours. Would task scheduler still show what’s scheduled to be done when computer is sleeping, in that case?

I’m not super familiar with the task scheduler app, do I look under the “Active Tasks” heading to see what tasks I have scheduled? There’s 125 total tasks listed there. I see a bunch under that list, some saying Multiple Triggers, some say Custom Triggers, some saying at a specific time and repeat every 1 hour. I guess some of the times these tasks are supposed to start would happen during night when I assume my computer is asleep. But how do I know which could be causing the crash?

You could start with the Task Scheduler Library which should be a shorter list. If there are any tasks scheduled to execute at a time when the computer is normally sleeping, you can change the time to the middle of the day and make a note of what happens and when. Then if the computer bluescreens at one of the times you have noted a task will be performed, then you'll know its that task is causing the problem. The same can be done for the Active Tasks list.

Or you could just stop using the Sleep function for a while and see if that eliminates the problem. Since the bluescreen was visible it may be the computer trying to initiate the sleep process that caused the crash.

Unfortunately computer diagnostics is a trial and error process of elimination where you try and eliminate various factors like the problem only happening when the computer's sleeping until you find the problem factor. Otherwise you're stuck doing a windows reinstall or swapping out hardware.