new nvme drive not found in Win10

[dw1975]

Hello, I recently purchased a new WD Blue SN550 to use for Steam, GOG and Epic games and other media. I have the drive installed in the 2nd m.2 slot on the board and it is not being detected in the bios or win10 disk management. I thought maybe the 2nd M.2 slot is disabled by default but I have looked through the bios for a setting or something and can't seem to find anything. I have my 1080ti in the top X16 slot and a Soundblaster Z in the 2nd PCIe 2.0 slot (see attached pic). I have looked through the mobo manual and the only thing I can find is that the M.2_2 socket shares PCIe clock with PCIe x1_1. When PCIe x1_1 or PCIe x1_3 is occupied, the M.2_2 socket can only support SATA mode. The soundblaster z card is in slot 1_2 so as far as I can tell it should work as slots 2.0x1_1 and 2.0x1_3 are empty. Any ideas? TIA

 

[zotric]

Just a few routine things in case you have not tried them.
Obviously it is important to preserve your current working system!
1. With the new drive installed: Make a note of your current BIOS settings then reset the bios. Then put back your original settings. See if the new drive is now detected in Windows.
2. If that did not work, and you want to risk it, re-flash your BIOS if there is a later version. See if the new drive is now detected in Windows.
3. If that did not work you might try removing all drives apart from the new one and see if a Windows install (from media) detects the new drive. At least then you will know whether or not it is to do with your Windows installation.
Don't do this with your other drives in place!!
4. If the new drive is still not detected I would try removing every board except for the essentials and repeat the previous step. You could do this first, of course, but be sure to remove every other drive first.

 

[Assimilator]

The drive may be DOA. Remove your current Samsung from the 1st M.2 slot and put the SN550 in there, then boot into BIOS. If the SN550 is still not detected then it's probably time to RMA it.

Assuming the drive seems good, remove the Sound Blaster and check again in the BIOS. If the SN550 is now detected, you know that PCIEX1_2 is also involved in some sort of lane-sharing shenanigans that the manual doesn't talk about. You can then try putting the Sound Blaster in PCIEX16_3 instead and see if that frees up the lane allocation.

Your BIOS may allow you to disable onboard devices and/or switch some chipset lanes around, and these options generally aren't very well named or described. Worst comes to worst, you can try a clear CMOS and see if that helps. It's possibly a compatibility issue between your board and the SN550 (seems unlikely to me but you never know), so a BIOS update (if available) may do the trick.

 

[Chrispy_]

The drive may be DOA. Remove your current Samsung from the 1st M.2 slot and put the SN550 in there, then boot into BIOS. If the SN550 is still not detected then it's probably time to RMA it.

This is the first thing I would do. 60 seconds of effort to instantly find out it's a motherboard issue or SSD issue.

 

[zotric]

The drive may be DOA. Remove your current Samsung from the 1st M.2 slot and put the SN550 in there, then boot into BIOS. If the SN550 is still not detected then it's probably time to RMA it.

Assuming the drive seems good, remove the Sound Blaster and check again in the BIOS. If the SN550 is now detected, you know that PCIEX1_2 is also involved in some sort of lane-sharing shenanigans that the manual doesn't talk about. You can then try putting the Sound Blaster in PCIEX16_3 instead and see if that frees up the lane allocation.

Your BIOS may allow you to disable onboard devices and/or switch some chipset lanes around, and these options generally aren't very well named or described. Worst comes to worst, you can try a clear CMOS and see if that helps. It's possibly a compatibility issue between your board and the SN550 (seems unlikely to me but you never know), so a BIOS update (if available) may do the trick.

A better approach than mine, I think.

 

[bonehead123]

Also remember that you will need to initialize the drive in Disk Mgmt before it will show up in your list of drives, but windows should have alerted you to that fact right away as soon as you installed it & booted up your machine....

 

[Toothless]

As @bonehead123 said, Disk Management and/or try Diskpart in CMD (as admin of course) to see if the drive needs to be picked at.

 

[dw1975]

Thanks for all the replies. I will try some of the suggestions later this evening. I'm wondering if the drive is DOA myself as it was an amazon return item.

edit - Well the drive appears to be dead. I tried it in the second m.2 slot on my laptop and nothing. Then I removed the drive from first m.2 slot and tried the sn550 and still nothing. I guess I'll rma it back to amazon. Thanks to everyone for your help.

 

[bonehead123]

as it was an amazon return item.

I would venture to say that some butthead a-wipe did the ole switcharoo with a bad drive, ordered a new one, and sent their bad drive back to da 'Zon saying the new one was DOA..

Hopefully they will be stupid enough to continue to abuse the return privelage & get their account closed forever.... they are cracking down on this as of late....

Sorry you had to put up with this nonsense