Question SOLVED - Thanks! - $150 reward if fixed - TUF Z390-Pro Gaming won't show my second m.2 in bios / Windows 10.

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Einhandei

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I bought two of these: HP EX900 M.2 1TB PCIe 3.1 X4 Nvme 3D TLC NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Max 2100 Mbps

And only the top one works now... They both used to work just fine. I even purchased a third to see if it was defective and alas not even the new one will show as a second m.2 drive.

Motherboard is TUF Z390-Pro Gaming.

TLDR: Cannot get the second m.2 drive (in slot below GPU) to appear in bios or Windows 10.

EDIT: Bottom slot isn't dead. I've switched out the m.2 drive that works and it is detectable in both.

EDIT2: I turned off my other SSD's to see if the m.2 drive would appear again... And it did.

I have a new problem though and I'll save that for another thread.
 
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clutchc

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Does your board/CPU have a PCIe lane limitation? Is it possible that there are not enough lanes available for the 2nd M.2 connector when the first M.2 connector is populated? Or if you have another PCIe device in one of the other PCIe slots.
 

Einhandei

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Where, within Windows does the drive not show up? Is it not present in Disk Management? You may simply need to initialize the drive...

Thanks for your reply! The motherboard has already worked with both m.2 driver before, and they both have heaps of data on them! I think it is something in my BIOS not configured correctly to detect both.
 

Einhandei

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Does your board/CPU have a PCIe lane limitation? Is it possible that there are not enough lanes available for the 2nd M.2 connector when the first M.2 connector is populated? Or if you have another PCIe device in one of the other PCIe slots.

I'm unsure of what you mean here. I have an RTX 2080 TI in one PCIe slot?
 
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There is a limitation to how many PCIe devices a PC can have for example my motherboard can only run its second M2 slot at X2 with SATA port 5 and 6 enabled and with them disabled it can run at X4. Have you recently added any other devices like SSDs.
 

Einhandei

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There is a limitation to how many PCIe devices a PC can have for example my motherboard can only run its second M2 slot at X2 with SATA port 5 and 6 enabled and with them disabled it can run at X4. Have you recently added any other devices like SSDs.

It's all worked before as is! I've added nothing new. The machine uses a bunch of harddrives.

I have 2x SSD (1tb and 500gb) and 2x m.2's and an external USB3 12TB Ironwolf.

Reckon I should play around with disabling SATA ports?
 

Einhandei

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I bought a couple of m.2 drives earlier this year. Promptly installed Windows 10 on one and have been using it for a few months. The other night I just restarted my computer like normal and suddenly my BIOS wouldn't even attempt to load Windows 10. No Windows repair, nothing, all I could do is infinitely loop back to my BIOS screen despite still seeing it in the BIOS as a bootable drive.

Fast forward to now - I got a new m.2 drive, I installed Windows 10 on it and it's working fine... So I plugged in the old m.2 drive and it shows up in BIOS and in Windows 10 device manager and disc management... Here is where it gets weird.

The m.2 drive that died is broken into 4x partitions.

1.) 100mb Healthy (EFI System Partition)
2.) 500mb Healthy Recovery (OEM Partition)
3.) D: 240gb Healthy (Primary Partition) <---This is where Windows 10 is installed.
4.) E: 700gb Healthy (Primary Partition)

Every partition works on it but, you guessed it, Partition D. Whenever I try to access it? The only option it gives me is "Format". I can't error check, I can't virus scan and I can't obviously open and browse the contents. Every other Partition works wonderfully, and I can access data and drag / drop from E:

I'll pay someone $150 to $300 if they can help me get my Windows 10 working on this m.2 drive again, this Windows 10 is acting as the conduit for roughly 20TB's of audio engineering / production and composing software and without it I'll have to spend months re-downloading and verifying the software I've purchased. Potentially more than a few months given the data cap.

EDIT: Thanks ahead of time!

EDIT2: In Disk Management D: drive is listed as "RAW" and not NTFS.
 

Einhandei

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I could help you verify some of the voltage test points on the PCB. There also appears to be a "safe mode" test point, but that would only confirm whether the controller is alive.

Thanks for your response!

I actually got it working! I had to rearrange my SATA SSD's for some odd reason. But, everything loads up now and I can see the secondary m.2 drive in the BIOS and DISK MANAGEMENT.

Sadly the partition I needed information off of is listed as "RAW" and I can no longer access it. Looking into software solutions now.
 

Einhandei

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Can't wait to get that $150! ;)

Correct me if I'm wrong but it actually had nothing to do with the PCIe slots! I even tried booting it up without the RTX using the on board graphics and nothing would work.

What did work was unplugging my SATA SSD and switching it to a different port.

If you want to help me recover / restore data from a RAW partition on my m.2 drive I'll gladly pay you for that! The only requirement is you call my cell or reach me on Skype for a call. Thanks ahead of time!
 

clutchc

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Correct me if I'm wrong but it actually had nothing to do with the PCIe slots! I even tried booting it up without the RTX using the on board graphics and nothing would work.

What did work was unplugging my SATA SSD and switching it to a different port.

If you want to help me recover / restore data from a RAW partition on my m.2 drive I'll gladly pay you for that! The only requirement is you call my cell or reach me on Skype for a call. Thanks ahead of time!
Lol.. that's ok. I was only joking. I wouldn't accept the money anyway. Just glad you have the 2nd M.2 slot functional again.
 

Einhandei

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Lol.. that's ok. I was only joking. I wouldn't accept the money anyway. Just glad you have the 2nd M.2 slot functional again.

Either way thank you for taking the time!

If I can get this machine back up and running? It's worth more than money.

My actual credibility as a producer / composer is on the line and I'm working with one of the biggest clients of my career. This is borderline a "dog ate my homework!" moment and I literally don't know what to tell them during our next meeting outside of bad hard drive is bad.

rips out hair

I'm close though... I just have to convert this RAW partition into NTFS with zero data loss.
 
Some motherboards disable a SATA port if a particular m.2 slot is occupied, or vice versa. Otherwise it could be that your SSD took too long to come ready and the OS or BIOS timed out while looking for it. That may also be the reason for the RAW partition.

I would check the SMART report. Look for bad blocks.

You could also examine the partitions with DMDE.
 

Wolfshadw

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For the record, Tom's Hardware does not endorse this type of financial encouragement. I'm surprised it was allowed passed the censors. If you wish to compensate someone for their assistance, that's entirely up to you, but in no way should it be advertised in public. It's a matter to take up in private messaging.

Wolfshadw
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I have no affiliation with DMDE, but its Express edition sells for US$20. DMDE is not only a data recovery tool, it is also a powerful disc editor.

I find Easeus's claims to be ambiguous, to put it kindly:

How to Convert RAW to NTFS Without Losing Data

Summary
It's common that a hard disk or partition suddenly becomes RAW and you cannot access its data. The general solution to this issue is to convert RAW to NTFS. Given that, we will show you how to convert RAW to NTFS without losing data with the help of RAW file recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

When I read this, my immediate thoughts were that the tool would work some magic on the damaged file system and restore it to its former state. However, it then goes on to explain that you need to recover the files from the damaged file system, write them to another drive, and then reformat the original drive. I wouldn't call this process a "conversion". It's more like a rebuild.
 

Einhandei

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Jul 30, 2019
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I have no affiliation with DMDE, but its Express edition sells for US$20. DMDE is not only a data recovery tool, it is also a powerful disc editor.

I find Easeus's claims to be ambiguous, to put it kindly:



When I read this, my immediate thoughts were that the tool would work some magic on the damaged file system and restore it to its former state. However, it then goes on to explain that you need to recover the files from the damaged file system, write them to another drive, and then reformat the original drive. I wouldn't call this process a "conversion". It's more like a rebuild.

I ended up going with EASEUS and recovered the drive 100%. The problem is now that I can't format the partition of the drive I just recovered. Without the ability to format it to NTFS I won't be able to rebuild the drive.

I've used DISKPART to clear the readonly, didn't work. I went into the registry and created the appropriate key and changed the base to decimal. Didn't work.

Any other way to get around a drive that won't let you format it because it's write protected?
 
Jul 24, 2019
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Correct me if I'm wrong but it actually had nothing to do with the PCIe slots! I even tried booting it up without the RTX using the on board graphics and nothing would work.

What did work was unplugging my SATA SSD and switching it to a different port.

If you want to help me recover / restore data from a RAW partition on my m.2 drive I'll gladly pay you for that! The only requirement is you call my cell or reach me on Skype for a call. Thanks ahead of time!

Lol just to bad im reading this a bit late...could have given you the answer from the get go...I dont know why they make motherboards like this....gives you so much storage capability but once you plug a few in or in the wrong slot some of the others disable themselves...stupid yea i know...

Regarding your write protection
https://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Write-Protection
Have a look if these steps help you, and let me know.
 

Einhandei

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Jul 30, 2019
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Lol just to bad im reading this a bit late...could have given you the answer from the get go...I dont know why they make motherboards like this....gives you so much storage capability but once you plug a few in or in the wrong slot some of the others disable themselves...stupid yea i know...

Regarding your write protection
https://www.wikihow.com/Disable-Write-Protection
Have a look if these steps help you, and let me know.

Last night was literal hell... I think I lost around 700gb of data trying to disable write protection and restore Windows 10 to that m.2 drive.

I'll post more information when I'm off work - Thank you ahead of time my man!
 
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