Question samsung 970 evo plus suddenly stopped working?

HaiMush

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Dec 9, 2013
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Hi everyone,
Suddenly I'm having a problem with my PC.
After installing 970 evo plus (M.2) for a couple month on my board MSI Z97-Gaming 5 it seems that it suddenly stopped working.

After a normal shut down yesterday, today I tried to boot my PC but then got a message that there's no boot device.
After checking with the BIOS it seemed that the mobo doesn't recognize the disk.

Now, I decide to further test the same M.2 disk on a different laptop, and I found that the disk is not booting at all and the disk is not recognized as well on the laptop.
Further to that, I decided to check if a different M.2 disk would work on my Z97 mobo and found that it's not recognizing it as well.

I tried to understand what's dead, the mobo M.2 connector or the 970 Evo Plus, and it seems like both just died, neither the mobo M.2 connector nor the 970 EVO Plus are working (After checking on another laptop).

Thought to have you opinion on that to see if someone knows any similar issues.
Right now I'm looking to replace the whole mobo and I'll probably have to use my M.2 warranty.

Your opinion is appreciated.

Thanks,
Haim.
 
For the M2 SSD, you should RMA it.

For the M2 connector on the Z97 MB. Try to update the BIOS or the chipset driver. If you still have the same problem, that means the M2 connector is gone, nothing you can do, either buy the used Z97 evo plus or other new MB.
 
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HaiMush

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Dec 9, 2013
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Thank you for your response.
After rechecking again with a different SSD Disk (mSata) connected to the M.2 connector, i managed to boot from it.
So it seems like the M.2 Connector on the mother board is working properly, but only the 970 Evo Plus for some reason died.

I'll definitely RMA it.
 

HaiMush

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Dec 9, 2013
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Hi,
I have another update regarding my case.
I took my M.2 SSD to the laboratory from the store that I bought the SSD.
They plugged it in and it worked perfectly, it seemed that the SSD recognized in the BIOS and it was bootable.
They suggested me to update the BIOS, I'll still try this, but I'm a bit skeptical, as this suddenly happened, and the recent BIOS update for my Mobo is from 2016.
Considering it's suddenly stopped detecting my SSD, but other M.2/mSata SSDs are being detected properly.

Do you have any thought about it?
 
Check your MB to see which BIOS it has, if the MB does not have the newer version ( 1D from 2016), you should update it, because SSD is very picky for the BIOS, drivers ( ahci or chipset), or the firmware.
If you need to update the BIOS, and you don't feel comfortable to do it, ask the shore for help. Keep in mind, if you don't do it right, you may or may not brick the MB.
 

HaiMush

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Dec 9, 2013
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10,630
Hi,
I have an update regarding this case.
I had the latest BIOS driver, but I tried to reinstall it anyway and it went smooth with no problems.
But still couldn't make it to work.

But, after rechecking my SSD on another laptop I came to conclusion that if for some reason the laptop is configured in UEFI mode it cannot detect my M.2 SSD 970 EVO Plus, when changing the configuration to Legacy I managed to see my SSD and boot from it using the laptop. That's why I couldn't detect the SSD at the first time.

Further to that, I came to conclusion that the problem should be 100% coming from the MB.
So I decided to try and clean the M.2 Connector, I used contact cleaner on the connector and after cleaning it properly I managed to make it to work again.

The reason why believed the issue was coming from the SSD was because another mSata disk that I connected to my M.2 connector for some reason worked.

By the way, after the first time of cleaning it it managed to boot from the M.2 SSD but seconds after the boot the computer became sluggish and kind of froze, after restarting it didn't detected it properly again so I decided to clean it up much better for the 2nd time and since then it's working properly.

Thanks for your feedback and assistance!
if anyone is encountering a similar problem, make sure to check also the connector is self, especially of the MB is pretty old.