M.2 SSD Not recognized in BIOS nor in Disk Management

[khchehab]

I bought an M.2 SSD and installed it on my motherboard (Asus Maximum VII Ranger).
In the BIOS under "Onboard Devices Configuration" then in "PCI Express X4_3 Slot (Black) Bandwidth" I chose "M.2 Mode", however after reboot I can't find the drive under disk management.
I tried other threads with the same issue, however, all of them state that I should choose the M.2 option and I did. What am I missing?

 

[photonboy]

what BIOS version do you have?

Latest is 3003.

I believe NVMe support was added in 2601

If that's not the problem, then other than testing in another board (or borrowing another 2260/2280 M.2 SSD to test in yours) I'm not sure what to suggest.

I doubt it would help, but you could try AUTO instaed of M.2 mode if you aren't using any of the PCIe slots that are affected.

 

[rgd1101]

Your board only support PCIE m.2 not SATA m.2 like the linked Kingston’s M.2 SATA G2 SSD

 

[khchehab]

what BIOS version do you have?

Latest is 3003.

I believe NVMe support was added in 2601

If that's not the problem, then other than testing in another board (or borrowing another 2260/2280 M.2 SSD to test in yours) I'm not sure what to suggest.

I doubt it would help, but you could try AUTO instaed of M.2 mode if you aren't using any of the PCIe slots that are affected.

I updated the bios to 3003 but still didn't work. In the description below in BIOS screen, anything other than M.2 will leave the M.2 ports disabled

 

[khchehab]

Your board only support PCIE m.2 not SATA m.2 like the linked Kingston’s M.2 SATA G2 SSD

So I can't use this ssd or is there some kind of workaround?

 

[rgd1101]

Can't use that. workaround would be purchase an adapter, which waste an PCIe slot.
Return that m.2 sata ssd.

 

[photonboy]

Can't use that. workaround would be purchase an adapter, which waste an PCIe slot.
Return that m.2 sata ssd.

Correct, plus I assume you want the M.2 SSD as the boot device which a PCIe addon may or may not allow depending on the motherboard.

After looking closer at the manual I saw the "PCIe mode only", so as said you need a PCIe version not SATA.

SIGH.

They really didn't think this through did they? Some support M.2 SATA and PCIe. some are different M.2 interfaces. Aaargh.

 

[photonboy]

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/ZNBrxr/samsung-960-evo-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-mz-v6e250

That's one of the better models. You had 120GB I think, but you might want to consider 250GB... I found that Windows kept eating up space over time and it slowly crept up to about 100GB used.

*You also get FAR MORE LIFE out of any SSD if you leave more of it unused (eventually blocks will be deemed unusable). Having said that if you have pretty light usage for programs you're probably okay with 120GB, but that may be only 100GB usable at best (with overprovisioning) and I would not go above 80% usage of that (so 80GB maximum for capacity).