NVMe SSD not fully detected by BIOS (MSI Z170A SLI Plus, Samsung 950 Pro)

[acetech09]

I have a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD and a MSI Z170A SLI Plus mobo. MSI's website says they're compatible. I was able to download drivers from Samsung's website and successfully mount/use the drive once I was in Windows.

However, the BIOS isn't detecting the drive on its own.

I googled some settings that supposedly needed changing for the BIOS to read it:

And the Intel RST menu detects the drive:

Buuut the main drive list doesn't detect the drive:

I was able to burn a win10 install DVD. The installer was able to detect the drive and installed windows - but when it came time to boot from the target drive, the Bios couldn't find it and it would just keep booting into the DVD again.

I then reset some settings on my mobo, ejected the dvd and was able to, on some level, read a windows 8 error message from the drive. So it's at least partially working.

I've been working on this for hours, and am coming to the conclusion that maybe the mobo isn't fully compatible with NVMe even though it states it is. Reportedly, other people with higher-end MSI mobos are able to boot from them fine, but there isn't any specific info on my mobo, since it's lower-end and uncommon.

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Mark_1970]

according to your makers site they have a later bios, perhaps the microcode will help Improved PCIe SSD compatibility.

 

[acetech09]

according to your makers site they have a later bios, perhaps the microcode will help Improved PCIe SSD compatibility.

Thanks for pointing that out, the autoupdater wasn't bringing me to the latest version. Updating to latest didn't change anything.

However, I poked around with the settings a bit more:

- I disabled 'RST PCIe Storage Remapping', kept everything else the same
- Booted, this time, Win10 gave me an error message but the option to hit f1 and 'debug'
- System rebooted and I'm actually in the Win10 installer now. It's talking to me and telling me about features I don't ever want to use, but still, it seems to work.

Let's see if it breaks. Going to hold off on calling it solved for a few hrs.

Edit: Disabling 'RST PCIe Storage Remapping' and then just rebooting a bunch of times seemed to fix it. Win10 is now running and booting stable a bunch of times.