Question M.2 SSD showing up in SATA port

[anjris]

Hi All,

I have a MSI motherboard MEG Z390 Ace and it has 3 M.2 slots. i have installed the SATA SSD in 2 slots as below from last 3 years and its working fine.

M.2_1: WD Green SATA SSD M.2 2280 (WDS120G2G0B)
M.2_2: Samsung SATA 860 EVO M.2 2280 (MZ-N6E500BW)

Recently I have installed M.2 NVME drive in the third slot which is dedicated to NVMe drive as below.

M.2_3: Kingston NVMe 2280 KC3000 1TB (SKC3000s/1024GB).


After adding NVMe drive into 3rd slot. My 1st SSD in M2_1 slot is started detecting as a SATA 2 port instead of M2_1.

There is nothing connected in SATA 2 port but still it shows under SATA 2 port.

It suppose to show under M.2_1 slot as originally it was showing.

In BIOS:
AHCI mode is selected.
Fast boot is disabled.

Table of my Motherboard.
According to below table, All M.3 slots should work as expected.

And as per below table, Slot 2 will be disabled if we install SATA drive in M.2_1. But in my case my SATA SSD is connected to M.2_1 and it is detecting under SATA 2 port.

Note: I have already tried to interchange my SSD between M.2_1 and M.2_2 slot. But it has same result.

 

[Lutfij]

Fast boot is disabled.
That should be enabled.

BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time?

 

[anjris]

Fast boot is disabled.
That should be enabled.

BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time?

I have already tried to do enable fast boot as well. Same result.

My BIOS is upto date.
Version:7B12v1B

Already tried to do reinstall the BIOS. Same result.

 

[Andrew Fox]

After adding NVMe drive into 3rd slot. My 1st SSD in M2_1 slot is started detecting as a SATA 2 port instead of M2_1.
There is nothing connected in SATA 2 port but still it shows under SATA 2 port.
It suppose to show under M.2_1 slot as originally it was showing.

And as per below table, Slot 2 will be disabled if we install SATA drive in M.2_1. But in my case my SATA SSD is connected to M.2_1 and it is detecting under SATA 2 port.

When you look at that table it does show SATA2 being disabled when a SATA SSD is used in M2_1 port, probably just a quirk of the board rerouting the SATA2 lanes to that M2 slot that it displays as SATA2 in BIOS now, since the drive is detected it does seem to be operating as normal. Does the drive still show up and work in the OS? I expect this is just a little display glitch, it shouldn't impact the working of your drive but as you know SATA2 port is not usable for any other drive now (as expected by table screenshot).

You can submit this display issue to the motherboard manufacturer and if the board is still under support they may/may not include the fix in the next BIOS update. It would be interesting to see what the port information in something like hwinfo64 displays once in the OS.

 

[anjris]

When you look at that table it does show SATA2 being disabled when a SATA SSD is used in M2_1 port, probably just a quirk of the board rerouting the SATA2 lanes to that M2 slot that it displays as SATA2 in BIOS now, since the drive is detected it does seem to be operating as normal. Does the drive still show up and work in the OS? I expect this is just a little display glitch, it shouldn't impact the working of your drive but as you know SATA2 port is not usable for any other drive now (as expected by table screenshot).

Its a cosmetic glitch. I have confirmed with the MSI guy on MSI forums.

There will be no performance issues.

As of now, i have removed my M2_1 slot drive. Now I am living with 2 drives only.

Because whenever I will restart my PC. it will do post test 2 times and then it will kick in when M2_1 was plugged in.

After removing SSD from M2_1. it restarts normally.

 

[Andrew Fox]

Ah the dreaded double post, I had that on my 2600k system which was a problem with quite a few sandy bridge boards and I understand your frustration. Have a look in your BIOS if you can adjust the function of M2_1 as some will let you set between PCIe/SATA/Auto mode, setting it to SATA mode may stop the double reboot.

Since you have already bought the SATA m.2 you can buy a cheap enclosure to make it into a USB drive or get an adaptor to make it into an internal 2.5", there's no speed difference between a regular SATA port and a SATA M2 connection so it won't impact the speed of your drive.

 

[anjris]

Ah the dreaded double post, I had that on my 2600k system which was a problem with quite a few sandy bridge boards and I understand your frustration. Have a look in your BIOS if you can adjust the function of M2_1 as some will let you set between PCIe/SATA/Auto mode, setting it to SATA mode may stop the double reboot.

I have searched each and every setting in BIOS. But didn't find anything related to set the PCIe/SATA/Auto mode.

Either it runs on AHCI or OPTANE/RAID mode.

There is no setting to select between PCIe/SATA/AUTO.