SM951 AHCI M.2 SSD in PCIe slot not detected by BIOS

[Tanyac]

I have an SM951 connected to an adapter card plugged into a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3r-B3 motherboard on F6 BIOS. The SSD is not detected at boot. No drives are found. The Marvell BIOS is loaded (for the adapter card).

This is an AHCI drive, not NVMe.

If I boot from a recovery disk, say Macrium for example, it sees the drive. I can clean/format/partition it no problems with diskpart. I've tried MBR and GPT. Neither work.

EDit: Updated to latest BIOS F7. No Change

Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[svan71]

try another pcie slot. if that does work reset bios to defaults see if it recognizes the card.

 

[Multipack]

NVME are usually AHCI, not RAID. Which PCIE slot is the adapter plugged in?

 

[Tanyac]

NVME are usually AHCI, not RAID.

BIOS is set to AHCI, not raid.

@Svan71: There is one PCIe slot accessible on the Z68X-UD3R motherboards once the graphics card is installed, as the first two slots are so close together that PCIe 2 is covered by the graphics card.

BIOS has been reset, and even upgraded.

 

[Multipack]

Exactly which slots? Because only one other slot on that board will support an NVME (the 2nd x16 slot)

 

[Tanyac]

There seems to be some confusion regarding this drive. The SM951 is an AHCI drive NOT an NVMe drive. It's a M.2 PCIe drive that runs in sata mode. It's connected via an M.2 <--> PCIe x4 adapter card.

This is not an NVMe drive, nor is it a raid drive and I am not attempting to configure it as a RAID. drive.

It's read/write specs are 900/600, not those of an NVMe drive.

There are 2 PCIe slots on the motherboard. PCIe 1 ix x1. PCIe 2 is X16. PCIe3 & 4 are x1, and the last one PCIe 4 is x8. The adapter card is x4 (Obviously - no M.2 drive currently runs at more than x4). I can't pug the adapter in x16 if I want the graphics card in x16. That leaves only one choice. The x8 slot. Which is fine. Since it's not an NVMe drive, and since it's only running at x4.

But for the sake of testing, I swapped the graphics and AHCI M.2 drive around and the results are identical. BIOS and Windows do not see the drive, recovery discs like Macrium and EaseUS and others all see the drive.

 

[Multipack]

It is an NVME drive, and I dont know where you got those stats from http://bit.ly/2kulOFY

You need to do a little more research I think as you are mixing quite a lot up there. You seem to be quite misguided about certain things. AHCI has nothing to do with NVME. All NVME drives will run in AHCI mode and most will run in RAID (the alternative to AHCI). I am not at all confused as its all very simple in all honesty.

Your board has these expansion slots..


1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
3 x PCI Express x1 slots
(All PCI Express slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
2 x PCI slots

As you can see, only two are capable of running the drive. The adapter you are using on a legacy chipset will almost certainly rule out the possibility of using it as a boot drive as the drivers will be loaded only after the OS boots via PCIE. I am not wholly clear on what you are trying to achieve. Hopefully someone can help you with your problem as you seem very frustrated by it.

 

[Tanyac]

Oh, for god's sake...

It is an NVME drive,

This is NOT an NVMe drive!!!! I bought it before the NVMe version was even released!!!!

http://techreport.com/review/28446/samsung-sm951-pcie-ssd-reviewed

Essential details
The SM951 is the follow-up to Samsung's XP941, an older M.2 gumstick with a quad-lane PCIe Gen2 interface. This new generation cranks the same number of lanes up to Gen3 speeds, effectively doubling the aggregate bandwidth to 4GB/s. To put that figure into perspective, consider that the dual-lane Gen2 interface behind the M.2 slots on most motherboards is limited to a mere 1GB/s.

Only a handful of X99 and Z97 boards have "Ultra," "Turbo," or otherwise amped-up M.2 slots with enough bandwidth to fully exploit the SM951. Quad-lane slots should be more common on next-gen Skylake boards due later this summer. In the meantime, the SM951 can be mounted on an M.2 adapter card and plugged into any full-sized PCIe slot.

There are actually two versions of the drive. The initial release uses the familiar AHCI protocol, while a newer variant adheres to the NVM Express standard. Our focus today is on the AHCI model, which is compatible with a broader range of motherboards ...

and I don't know where you got those stats from

I did mean to type 1900/600. That was a typo, but in any case, you are right. The maximum is actually 2050, though I never got anything better than ~1900 from the drive.

http://www.storagereview.com/node/4803

Samsung SM951 M.2 Specifications

Capacities: 512GB, 256GB, 128GB
Controller: Samsung UBX 3-Core
Flash: Samsung 16nm MLC
Form Factor: M.2 2280 M-Key PCIe 3.0 x4
Sequential Read: 2,150MB/s, 2,150MB/s, 2,050MB/s
Sequential Write: 1,500 MB/s, 1,200 MB/s, 600MB/s
4K Random Read: 90,000 IOPS
4K Random Write: 70,000 IOPS
Active Power: 6.5W
Idle Power: 50mW
L1.2 Power: 2mW
Support: Standard AHCI driver, APM and L1.2 Power Saving Mode, End-to-End Data Protection, Supports TRIM Command, RoHS Compliant, Halogen-Free Compliant
Warranty: 3-year Warranty

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=305&PN=3&title=sm951-as-os-boot-device-information

Important update:

It has come to my attention (thank you Parsec) that the SM951 is not in fact an NVMe supporting drive, while it was originally claimed by Samsung that it would support the feature the final release product is in fact AHCI not NVMe.

Hopefully someone can help you with your problem as you seem very frustrated by it.

I was hoping so too. What I'm frustrated by is the fact that I keep getting told I have a NMVe drive, when I know for a fact it's an AHCI protocol version.

Now, that should be enough evidence to prove I have an AHCI version. Not an NVMe version.

What reviews say is that it is compatible with M.2 Adapter cards... The caveat is that support was only available from Z97 chipsets. If I hadn't been so adamant on proving I have an AHCI version I probably would never have come across that statement.

So, I'll have to use my 750 EVO as the boot drive (And that answers your question of what I am trying to achieve... Install a SSD Boot drive).

In any case, I thank you for taking the time to at least try and help me out.

We both learned something

 

[svan71]

951 is not NVME ...

 

[Tanyac]

951 is not NVME ...

Indeed. I think I've finally proven that