Question M.2 SSD Not Recognized

[srtudas]

I know this issue has been talked about a lot before but I could never find help that didn't break something or involve making the M.2 the boot drive.

I just bought a Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD (500GB) from Microcenter for a steal and thought installing it was pretty straight forward but it doesn't seem that way. I would like this drive to possibly be a game drive or storage drive I'm not sure yet (yes, I know this is a waste of an M.2 SSD but I already have an 860 Evo and 850 Evo for games and boot drive and they are plenty fast enough).

My issue is that I have gone through the bios trying to figure out how to enable the M.2 port but to no success. I actually ended up messing up the PCIE lanes and had to pull my two 1070s out, enter bios on integrated graphics to reset the changes I made initially. That leads me here so I don't have to do that again.

It seems my M.2 port must not be isn't enabled by default because the SSD is never recognized. Could I get some help on how to activate the M.2 slot? Thanks.

Specs:
MB: ASUS Z370-A
CPU: Core i7-8700

 

[adamgrant520]

you need to create a new partition, this is simple and easy and is done through windows,

to do this search disk management in windows search bar and "create and format harddisk partitions" will show up. click on that, then its pretty simple from there, right click on the disk that looks a little greyed out or doesnt show the big blue line and then click create new partition, then select select the size of the drive and thats it, your done !

 

[Obakasama]

I'll take a different route. How have you installed the previous SSDs? And what form factor?

Between the manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/PRIME_Z370-A/E13271_PRIME_Z370-A_UM_WEB.pdf
and the webpage: https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/PRIME-Z370-A/specifications/
The top M.2 slot shares bandwidth with the SATA_5 and 6 ports.
The bottom M.2 slot shares bandwidth with the SATA_1 port.

It does seem there might be some BIOS options you need to go through as well.

 

[srtudas]

you need to create a new partition, this is simple and easy and is done through windows,

to do this search disk management in windows search bar and "create and format harddisk partitions" will show up. click on that, then its pretty simple from there, right click on the disk that looks a little greyed out or doesnt show the big blue line and then click create new partition, then select select the size of the drive and thats it, your done !

I probably should have mentioned but the bios does not recognize my drive therefore Windows will not recognize it. That's why I was asking about bios settings because I believe the slot needs to be activated at least on my MB.

 

[srtudas]

I'll take a different route. How have you installed the previous SSDs? And what form factor?

Between the manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/PRIME_Z370-A/E13271_PRIME_Z370-A_UM_WEB.pdf
and the webpage: https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/PRIME-Z370-A/specifications/
The top M.2 slot shares bandwidth with the SATA_5 and 6 ports.
The bottom M.2 slot shares bandwidth with the SATA_1 port.

It does seem there might be some BIOS options you need to go through as well.

This is what I believe is true. I will continue to do more research I guess and hopefully not break anything while testing. My other SSDs (850 Evo and 860 Evo) are both connected via SATA ports 1 and 4 so they are not effected by the M.2_2 slot being in X4 mode.

 

[srtudas]

At this point, I have acknowledged that I installed the SSD into the top slot or the M.2_2 slot which supports PCI-E and SATA SSDs and I have now put that M.2 slot in X4 mode which I believe it needs to be in to support the 970 Evo. However, it is still not recognized in the bios and therefore not recognized in Windows. A little stumped on this one because I can't seem to find any other settings relating to M.2 slots in the bios.

 

[Obakasama]

Did you go through the manual? Page 3-16 seems to be the part about BIOS options.

 

[srtudas]

Did you go through the manual? Page 3-16 seems to be the part about BIOS options.

Yes, I did. The manual just tells me what each setting means and the only setting pertaining to M.2_2 slot is whether it is in X2 mode or X4 mode. I think I am going to try switching the 970 Evo into the M.2_1 port under the shroud on the motherboard. I'm I little confused as to why they would put the slot (that seems like they want you to use first) under a shroud the needs to be taken off. Will update if that fixes anything.

 

[srtudas]

I moved the drive to the other M.2 slot on default settings in the bios and it worked and now it's been formatted and I've downloaded the Samsung NVMe driver. Thank you for the help.

 

[Obakasama]

Good.

The shroud is supposed to be a cooler, I believe.