Help! Mydigital PCIe M.2 drive not working on Asus Z97A?

[David Riley]

I have an Asus Z97A system. Currently running with an SATA III SSD for root drive and 3 additional WD Black drives for data. I decided to add an M.2 drive to the board with the hopes of migrating my system to the M.2 and using the current SSD for other things. I added the M.2 to my system, and changed to the BIOS to reflect M.2. The drive shows up in my device manager but it has no drivers, and if I go to update the drivers it won't find any on my system or online. So I can't tell if this is a driver issue or a bios issue or what! Any ideas how to address this? Do I have conflicts between this M.2 drive and the other SATA drives? Thanks in advance. David

 

[stdragon]

Sounds like while the M.2 drive is being physically enumerated in Device Manager, it's not associated with a drive letter? Correct?

If so, you just need to create a partition and format it in Disk Management.

Note: not required if you plan on cloning the root drive over to this new SSD, as it would erase anything that exists there in the first place. In this case, it's new, so it would already be empty.

 

[David Riley]

It shows up in Device Manager (under other devices, but needing drivers), but does not show up in the Disc Manager area, nor in any application for disc cloning. Any other ideas?

Sounds like while the M.2 drive is being physically enumerated in Device Manager, it's not associated with a drive letter? Correct?

If so, you just need to create a partition and format it in Disk Management.

Note: not required if you plan on cloning the root drive over to this new SSD, as it would erase anything that exists there in the first place. In this case, it's new, so it would already be empty.

 

[stdragon]

You are running Windows 10?

Well, M.2 comes in two types; SATA and NVMe.

It's possible there's a hardware conflict. Some SATA based M.2 cards will share the same resources as SATA port1 on the motherboard. You can have one or the other populated, but not both.

If it's NVMe, in some cases, there's a PCIe lane resource conflict based on what card you have installed in a particular slot.

 

[cl-justin]

Is your BIOS up to date?

 

[Calvin7]

Your M.2 SSD contains UEFI driver information within the firmware. By disabling the CSM module Windows will read and utilize the M.2-specific UEFI driver.

The SATA SSD you planned migrating the system to the M.2 does not do that, therefore won't be successful.

Connect only the M.2 drive to install windows 10.
Go into the bios, under the boot tab there is an option for CSM, make sure it is disabled.
Insert a USB memory stick with a bootable UEFI USB drive with Windows 10
Press F10 to save, exit and reboot

How to create a bootable UEFI USB drive with Windows 10 Setup
https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-create-a-bootable-uefi-usb-drive-with-windows-10-setup/

You may want to make some changes if you want to enable secure boot.
NVME SSDs do not appear within the BIOS until Windows creates the system partition with the EFI Boot Sector.

 

[David Riley]

Thanks for the answers! I'm running Windows 7 64 bit SP1. Bios is up to date and includes NVME support. While it's a PCIe based M.2 there are no lane conflicts as it only confilcts with the PCI x1 and x2 slots on the MB, and I have nothing in those slots. This M.2 showed as compatible on PCpartpicker, but I'm thinking of returning it and trying a Samsung 960 EVO.

 

[David Riley]

I accidentally voted down this response and didn't mean to, but it won't let me change my vote. I'm sorry about that. :/

Your M.2 SSD contains UEFI driver information within the firmware. By disabling the CSM module Windows will read and utilize the M.2-specific UEFI driver.

The SATA SSD you planned migrating the system to the M.2 does not do that, therefore won't be successful.

Connect only the M.2 drive to install windows 10.
Go into the bios, under the boot tab there is an option for CSM, make sure it is disabled.
Insert a USB memory stick with a bootable UEFI USB drive with Windows 10
Press F10 to save, exit and reboot

How to create a bootable UEFI USB drive with Windows 10 Setup
https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-create-a-bootable-uefi-usb-drive-with-windows-10-setup/

You may want to make some changes if you want to enable secure boot.
NVME SSDs do not appear within the BIOS until Windows creates the system partition with the EFI Boot Sector.

 

[David Riley]

Actually I guess my next question would be, given that the M.2 support on my Z97-A MB shares bandwidth with the PCIe 1x and 2x channels on the board (unoccupied currently), would an M.2 card still be faster than if I just bought another 2.5 inch SATA III SSD and ran via the SATA ports? If the M.2 board didn't work and I bought a PCIe adapter card to run out of one of the PCIe 3 channels would that work and also be faster than an SATA III SSD?

 

[USAFRet]

Actually I guess my next question would be, given that the M.2 support on my Z97-A MB shares bandwidth with the PCIe 1x and 2x channels on the board (unoccupied currently), would an M.2 card still be faster than if I just bought another 2.5 inch SATA III SSD and ran via the SATA ports? If the M.2 board didn't work and I bought a PCIe adapter card to run out of one of the PCIe 3 channels would that work and also be faster than an SATA III SSD?

Just get a regular SATA III 2.5" drive.
Z97 boards were released on the cusp of NVMe drives appearing. Support is spotty, and generally slower than with new boards. 1x and 2x, for example.

A SATA III drive is natively supported, and fast enough for the vast majority of uses.

 

[stdragon]

SATA III is capped out at 600MB/s. M.2 would be faster, and because NVMe isn't using the SATA protocol, IOPs will be a lot better.

It's up to you. Easiest path is just to get a SATA III SSD like USAFRet suggested. If you're hard set on keeping this MB for awhile longer, you might want to think about upgrading to Windows 10; it supports booting off an NVMe drive natively whereas Windows 7 doesn't. Though you can sorta hack Win7 to boot, and documentation does exist to support it.... Besides, Windows 10 support newer DirectX anyways

 

[stdragon]

Check out the link below. Intel last updated this document as of Feb 2018. It's in regards to enabling NVMe support for Windows 7 and methods to prepare the OS for boot. It's only 15 pages, but it's a "must read", and thus I highly recommend looking through it.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/memory-and-storage/enthusiast-ssds/PCIe-NVMe-SSD-Install-Boot-Guide.pdf

 

[USAFRet]

Check out the link below. Intel last updated this document as of Feb 2018. It's in regards to enabling NVMe support for Windows 7 and methods to prepare the OS for boot. It's only 15 pages, but it's a "must read", and thus I highly recommend looking through it.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/memory-and-storage/enthusiast-ssds/PCIe-NVMe-SSD-Install-Boot-Guide.pdf

And note, that is talking about installing on a relatively recent board. Z270 Chipset.

Older ones like the Z97 in question...the benefit of the NVMe vs SATA III goes way down.
I have an ASRock Z97 (all SATA III SSD), and the theoretical performance (minimal) benefit just wasn't there going to an NVMe drive.

 

[David Riley]

Good info! Thanks everyone for the great advice.