[SOLVED] M.2 NVMe SSD went undetected by BIOS after SATA SSD installation

[ChottiwattJ]

My laptop (ASUS FX503VD) is originally installed with two storage. The main one is M.2 NVMe SSD (Western Digital Black SN700) and the second one for data storage which is a Seagate SATA HDD. A few weeks ago the HDD failed but my laptop is fine because the OS is installed in the M.2 SSD. So I ordered the new replacement for the storage drive which is the SATA SSD (WDC WDS500G2B0A).

The SSD I ordered arrived today so I proceed with the initial test by connecting the SATA SSD with my SATA to USB 3.0 cable and tested several read and write tests. It is working fine. So I proceed with the installation, everything looks good until I boot the laptop. The "Checking media presence" text appeared and it failed. Then the BIOS menu appeared. From what I see, the BIOS can't detect the M.2 SSD (OS is based on this drive) but it did detect the SATA SSD. I checked the boot priority menus, several options are available which are P2: WDS500G2B0A (SATA SSD), UEFI PXE Ip4, and UEFI PXE Ip6. Of course, normally the windows boot manager which is the M.2 SSD would be there. So, I shut my laptop down again and disconnect the SATA SSD I recently installed. Then boot to BIOS again, the windows boot manager (M.2 SSD) magically appears again, and yes I tried booting the windows and it is fine.

I tried everything, enabling and disabling things like CSM Support, Legacy support, PXE opROM Policy, Secure boot, Fast boot and randomly switching the boot order, try connecting the SATA SSD when the Windows is already booted up (It doesn't want to appear even in disk manager). Two of them don't want to work together, but after all. The SATA SSD is working fine on USB3.0. I don't know why. I'm going to try installing the OS on the SATA SSD and boot it from there, see if it work. Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

[vov4ik_il]

Some boards only support one mode, either sata or nvme on certain m.2 ports, I would carefully go over the limitations documentary for this laptop.

 

[ChottiwattJ]

Some boards only support one mode, either sata or nvme on certain m.2 ports, I would carefully go over the limitations documentary for this laptop.

There is no limitations documentary for this laptop or if there is, I can't find one. But why the NVMe works just fine with SATA HDD but not SATA SSD?

 

[vov4ik_il]

There is no limitations documentary for this laptop or if there is, I can't find one. But why the NVMe works just fine with SATA HDD but not SATA SSD?

I might be wrong, but here it says that specifically SATA SSD is supported.

 

[ChottiwattJ]

I might be wrong, but here it says that specifically SATA SSD is supported.

Yeah, that's why I bought the SATA SSD. But it would not work with both NVMe SSD and SATA SSD installed. I will try contacting support today.

 

[popatim]

you did write testing on it so I assume you formatted it or it is used.
I would connect it back to USB and run Diskpart's Clean command on it to wipe the drive and then install it and see if It will boot the NVME drive. Once in Windows you can format it there.

 

[ChottiwattJ]

you did write testing on it so I assume you formatted it or it is used.
I would connect it back to USB and run Diskpart's Clean command on it to wipe the drive and then install it and see if It will boot the NVME drive. Once in Windows you can format it there.

I actually installed the SATA SSD before actually doing anything to it. Like when it arrived I unboxed it and immediately connect it to SATA port on my laptop. But once I tried to boot, the NVMe just doesn't want to boot and disappear from the BIOS and come back when I disconnect SATA SSD from SATA port. So, I connect it with USB then initialize and format, finally proceed with a reinstall. Nope, it just doesn't want to work. I will try moving my OS to the SATA SSD and see if the NVMe will appear on the Windows when it is booted.