Help - New M.2 SSD problems, advice needed

Nirnias

Hi Guys,

Its been a while since i used boards.ie but im currently trying to figure something out and for the life of me i cant seem to get it to work, so i thought i might come here and see if anyone can lend me some friendly advice.

So I have a Aorus X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING motherboard.
It currently has a 3TB and 1TB HDD i use for storage.
It has a 128GB OCZ-VERTEX4 SSD i use just for the OS
500GB Samsung Evo 860 for games.
1000W PSU
16GB RAM
AMD R9 390 GPU

I just bought a Samsung Evo 970 Plus 1TB.

The Samsung Evo 860 500GB was slotted in to the M.2 slot closest to the CPU and under the GPU. I never have issues with it.

Since I got the new 970 PLUS i inserted it in to the second M.2 Slot. I put the 1TB drive in to the M.2 Slot further away from the CPU. Both SSD's worked fine however I experienced random crashes after that some within minutes, others much longer. I since updated my motherboards BIOS to the latest version and other settings via the motherboards website and "so far" have not experienced any other crashes (its been over a day).

However when I did a speed test on the new 1TB SSD it was not performing as fast as I expected. I then discovered the M.2 slot closest to the CPU and under the GPU is the one to use with the 1TB drive.

I then swapped the two SSD's around so that the Evo 970 PLUS was closest to CPU and under the GPU and the Evo 860 was in the slot further away from CPU. I then did a speed test on the 1TB and got the expected read and right speeds for the drive, happy days.

However, now the 500GB Evo 860 does not get detected by the OS, it is not in file explorer nor is it in Disk Management. I am running the latest drivers for the SSD, latest OS updates, latest BIOS firmware for the motherboard, etc. Yet for the life of me I cant seem to get my 500GB 860 Evo to be detected (i had plans to move the OS to the 500GB SSD and put the 128GB in a spare laptop i have).

I will test to see if switching back the SSD's the other way makes both work again, but I would like the 1TB drive to be in the faster slot obviously.

Has anyone experienced similar issues in the past or can lend some advice or further troubleshooting tips?

Thanks in advance

ED E

One of the slots is gimped.




You should probably get a PCIE finger to M.2 NVME adapter. Unfortunately its common for onboard slots to be garbage, even on €500 mobos.

Nirnias

Hi Ed E,

Thanks for the quick reply. Did not know the M.2 slots were that flakey. Motherboard I think I bought in late 2018 and iv never used that second M.2 slot before so never had an issue.

I'm wondering now if when i had the 970 in the lower slot and the 860 in the slot near CPU and i was experiencing crashes was it because the lower slot was gimped hmm.

Anyways ill purchase one of those PCIE finger to M.2 NVME adapters now and hopefully that will solve the issue.

JoyPad

You should check your motherboard manual for shared SATA lanes.
Some boards specify that a SATA drive in the second m.2 slot shares SATA lanes with the motherboard's SATA ports. If so, you cannot use certain SATA ports (usually 5 and 6 on a 6 slot SATA motherboard), if the m.2 slot is occupied with a SATA SSD.

Oh wait: I checked the manual, and your second slot does not support SATA SSDs at all.

So, the top one (close to CPU) supports PCIe 3.0 and SATA, which is why both Samsungs work in it. The other one only supports PCIe 2.0 and no SATA, which means the NVMe works in it, but gimped to PCIe 2.0, and the 860 doesn't work at all.

1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2A_SOCKET)
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 PCIe 2.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2B_SOCKET)

ED E

Nirnias wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply. Did not know the M.2 slots were that flakey.

To clarify, its PCIE2.0. Its a crap design, not that its failed.

Nirnias

JoyPad wrote: »

You should check your motherboard manual for shared SATA lanes.
Some boards specify that a SATA drive in the second m.2 slot shares SATA lanes with the motherboard's SATA ports. If so, you cannot use certain SATA ports (usually 5 and 6 on a 6 slot SATA motherboard), if the m.2 slot is occupied with a SATA SSD.

Oh wait: I checked the manual, and your second slot does not support SATA SSDs at all.

So, the top one (close to CPU) supports PCIe 3.0 and SATA, which is why both Samsungs work in it. The other one only supports PCIe 2.0 and no SATA, which means the NVMe works in it, but gimped to PCIe 2.0, and the 860 doesn't work at all.

1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2A_SOCKET)
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 PCIe 2.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2B_SOCKET)

Thank you, that does explain it so. Ill wait for the adapter to arrive and figure out which PCIE slot is best to put the adapter in. I assume similiar to the M.2 Slot the PCIE slots closest to the mother board are more suited?
I can move my GPU down since that covers those slots if that is the case.

You guys are great, i opened a ticket with Gigabyte but when i saw the 7-8 working days for a reply i came here.

Thank you

If you're running two nvme drives a few of your sata ports will be knocked out..I have two in the aorus pro wifi.. I can only use 3 sata ports I think..check the manual as to which ones..

Nirnias

Thanks guys,

I took the 500 GB 860 out. So only have the 1TB 970 PLUS plugged in to the M2A_SOCKET.
Installed Steam on to the 1TB and 1 game. Launched game didnt "really" notice quicker loading.
But did notice a slight chop in the audio while playing every now and again which wasnt there before.

8 minutes in to playing the game my PC crashed and froze. So updating the BIOS and all the others didnt actually fix the initial crashing problem, it just had not occured in a while. I think i might just either return the 1TB drive for a replacement or a refund. Putting the 1TB in the M2B_SOCKET might work, but not at its full read and write speeds.

EDIT:
Removed the 970 put back in the 860... PC crashed when i was formatting the 860... That leads me to believe the issue is ACTUALLY with my 128GB SSD which has my OS installed on it, not either of the M.2 drives... grrrr

BloodBath

I'd say get a new motherboard instead of gimping your drives but that might require a new cpu and possibly memory as well.

Also move windows to your biggest fastest drive. It will benefit more than games from the extra speed and bigger drives are more durable especially if it's TLC NAND instead of QLC. An old 128gb sata ssd will be terribly slow compared to a new fast 1tb pcie3 nvme ssd. It's also probably dead as small old ssd's are not very durable and windows does a lot of writes which will kill the drive faster.

Games will also benefit from the extra speed later in 2021 when gpu's will gain direct access to the ssd closest to the gpu.

Nirnias

BloodBath wrote: »

I'd say get a new motherboard instead of gimping your drives but that might require a new cpu and possibly memory as well.

Also move windows to your biggest fastest drive. It will benefit more than games from the extra speed and bigger drives are more durable especially if it's TLC NAND instead of QLC. An old 128gb sata ssd will be terribly slow compared to a new fast 1tb pcie3 nvme ssd. It's also probably dead as small old ssd's are not very durable and windows does a lot of writes which will kill the drive faster.

Games will also benefit from the extra speed later in 2021 when gpu's will gain direct access to the ssd closest to the gpu.

This is exactly what i just finished doing. I removed the older 128GB SSD i had dedicated to my OS and also the 500GB 860 SSD.

Now i just have the 1TB M.2 SSD with my OS and installing games on. I still have the 1TB and 3TB drives for storage.

The 500GB 860 EVO is sitting on the side until the M.2 to PCIE adapter arrives. So far since installing OS freshly on the M.2 1TB no crashes have occurred. Played about an hour of a game without issues.

I just thought it HIGHLY suspicious this all started right after i inserted a new M.2 drive.

BloodBath

You can test the health of the 128gb drive with a load of software like crystal disk info if you wanna be sure.

I'd say it's probably on it's last legs. Small SSD's have really bad durability.

Nirnias

BloodBath wrote: »

You can test the health of the 128gb drive with a load of software like crystal disk info if you wanna be sure.

I'd say it's probably on it's last legs. Small SSD's have really bad durability.

Yeah i ran Crystal disk on all my SSD's and HDD's during my troubleshooting and didnt discover anything. Although when running a chkdsk on the C: drive a few times i did notice errors, then did chkdsk /f to fix the errors on next reboot.


Since installing OS on the 1TB all has been running fine no crashes. Just awaiting the adapter to arrive so i can put back in my 500GB M.2 drive.


I appreciate everyone's replies in helping me fix this.

Nirnias

Sorry to bring this back up, have a question about that adapter.


The SSD is this M.2 one:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078WQVX9B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


It is SATA, not NVME. So that explains why it doesnt work in the M2B slot,


1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 PCIe 2.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2B_SOCKET)


However i bought this adapter:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07RZZ3TJG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1


Probably not eh best one to get, to much "putting it together" with rubber bands but i didnt really spend a lot of time checking it as thought it was a simple adapter. Anywho.


That arrived today, i put it together put my 500GB 860 EVO in to it, slotted it in to the PCI slot lower down:


Apologies about this direct link to google images, for some reason when i try to insert an image in to this post, it gets blocked as a malicious attempt as SQL injection. Not sure how boards.ie handles syntax input, but it seems to malform it somehow.



https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigabyte.com%2FFileUpload%2FGlobal%2FKeyFeature%2F929%2Fimages%2Fspec-small.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gigabyte.com%2FMotherboard%2FX470-AORUS-ULTRA-GAMING-rev-10&tbnid=RpUy7i5yoYr6gM&vet=12ahUKEwjbk9zqi87tAhX0QBUIHQ53BVAQMygAegUIARCgAQ..i&docid=qbOX70mstBTC5M&w=708&h=982&q=x470%20aorus%20ultra%20gaming%20motherboard%20manual&hl=en-US&client=firefox-b-d&ved=2ahUKEwjbk9zqi87tAhX0QBUIHQ53BVAQMygAegUIARCgAQ

Slot marked with number 8. However it is still not showing up in disk management.

I did a diskpart and list disk cmd and it doesnt show up there either.


Checking my BIOS it does seem to list "something" that is Samsung related (other than my 970) in the boot order of detected disks, which i assume can only be this 860. However i cant seem to get it to be detected by the OS.


The manual for the motherboard says:

" The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with the M2B_SOCKET connector. The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector."


However, since i have nothing plugged in to the M2B slot, that should not matter.


Do you fine folk have any other guidance for me?



As a side note, my PC stopped crashing completely when i moved my OS to the 1TB NVME drive so thanks for that.

ED E

Did you put the MSata 860 mentioned at the start of your post in that adapter? If so it won't work. The adapter listed is NVME only, ie everything that isnt MSata.

Note: Supports M.2 M key, NVMe or AHCI protocol, PCIe based SSD only, does NOT support any SATA based M.2 SSD

To be clear here:
M2 = connector, can be different "keying"
Protocol = SATA(mSata) or NVME. NVME is essentially PCIE but PCIE is more than just NVME.


The Silverstone SST-ECM22 for example has a SATA and an NVME slot on the same board. Handy but you need to use a sata cable back to the mobo as well as the PCIE slot which is ugly.


Put the NVME Drive (1TB is NVME right?) on the new adapter, put the mSata 860 EVO on the Msata slot on the mobo itself. You may then need to change your boot order in UEFI.

Nirnias

Accidentally posted twice. Ignore this. Apologies

Nirnias

ED E wrote: »

Did you put the MSata 860 mentioned at the start of your post in that adapter? If so it won't work. The adapter listed is NVME only, ie everything that isnt MSata.



To be clear here:
M2 = connector, can be different "keying"
Protocol = SATA(mSata) or NVME. NVME is essentially PCIE but PCIE is more than just NVME.


The Silverstone SST-ECM22 for example has a SATA and an NVME slot on the same board. Handy but you need to use a sata cable back to the mobo as well as the PCIE slot which is ugly.


Put the NVME Drive (1TB is NVME right?) on the new adapter, put the mSata 860 EVO on the Msata slot on the mobo itself. You may then need to change your boot order in UEFI.

Damn i didnt even notice i bought the wrong type of adapter. That said i was operating under the assumption my 500GB 860 M.2 was a NVME and not a SATA. But i see its a SATA one.


My only concern about putting the 1TB 970 in to the adapter and putting that in in the PCIE slot is do you think it would still get the full read and write speeds?


When i got the drive i originally put the 1TB in the M2B slot. However when i tested it with Crystalmark it was not reading/writing as fast as i was expecting.


When i took the 500GB 860 out of the M2A slot and put the 1TB 970 in to M2A instead. Then i saw the read/write speeds i was expecting from the drive.


If there is an "adapter" for the actual 500GB 860 M.2 drive i have i will get that. Even if i have to feed a sata cable to a sata connector. I was not expecting this much troubleshooting to insert a new disk lol

JoyPad

Nirnias wrote: »

My only concern about putting the 1TB 970 in to the adapter and putting that in in the PCIE slot is do you think it would still get the full read and write speeds?

If you could stick the adapter in the middle slot, that one is PCIe 3.0, and it would be as fast as the top m.2 slot. The bottom slot is PCIe 2.0, just like the second m.2 slot, so the NVMe drive would not work at top speed.

Let me clarify:
Take out the NVMe drive from the top m.2 slot, install it into the adapter, and stick the adapter in the middle slot, the one marked PCIEx8.
If you put it in the bottom slot, PCIeX4, it will work at PCIe 2.0 speed (gimped).

After this, you can install the SATA drive back into the top m.2 slot, and you should be fine.

Just make sure you boot from the NVMe drive, you should be able to set this in your BIOS.

ED E

JoyPad wrote: »

Let me clarify:
Take out the NVMe drive from the top m.2 slot, install it into the adapter, and stick the adapter in the middle slot, the one marked PCIEx8.
If you put it in the bottom slot, PCIeX4, it will work at PCIe 2.0 speed (gimped).

The M2 slots are the limited ones.


The adapter in ANY slot is full whack. Both the full length fingers are PCIE4 and provide everything you need.

JoyPad

ED E wrote: »

The M2 slots are the limited ones.


The adapter in ANY slot is full whack. Both the full length fingers are PCIE4 and provide everything you need.

The top m.2 slot is PCIe 3.0 and SATA compatible. Both his drives would work here.
The bottom m.2 slot is PCIe 2.0 only. The NVMe drive works in it, but gimped, while the SATA drive does not work at all.

He has 3 full-length PCIe slots. The top one is X16, middle one is X8, and bottom is X4. The manual states that X16 and X8 are PCIe 3.0, while the X1s and the X4 are PCIe 2.0.

Manual here.

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)*
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
* 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)*
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
(The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
* The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with the M2B_SOCKET connector. The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector.
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
(The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)

Nirnias

JoyPad wrote: »

The top m.2 slot is PCIe 3.0 and SATA compatible. Both his drives would work here.
The bottom m.2 slot is PCIe 2.0 only. The NVMe drive works in it, but gimped, while the SATA drive does not work at all.

He has 3 full-length PCIe slots. The top one is X16, middle one is X8, and bottom is X4. The manual states that X16 and X8 are PCIe 3.0, while the X1s and the X4 are PCIe 2.0.

Manual here.

1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)*
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
* 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)*
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
* The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
(The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
* The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with the M2B_SOCKET connector. The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector.
2 x PCI Express x1 slots
(The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)

And you are spot on sir and i love you for it.


Just did all your recommendations and did a speed test before and after.
I moved the 1TB NVME in to the adapter, put the adapter in to the PCIE x 8 slot.


Put the 500GB in to the M2A slot. Changed the boot order, bobs your uncle, hey presto. Both drives being detected. And both at their full read and write speeds!


Thank you very much i was getting annoyed with the amount of times i was opening and closing my PC testing things

Conar

Nirnias wrote: »

And you are spot on sir and i love you for it.


Just did all your recommendations and did a speed test before and after.
I moved the 1TB NVME in to the adapter, put the adapter in to the PCIE x 8 slot.


Put the 500GB in to the M2A slot. Changed the boot order, bobs your uncle, hey presto. Both drives being detected. And both at their full read and write speeds!


Thank you very much i was getting annoyed with the amount of times i was opening and closing my PC testing things

Hey.....just stumbled on this thread and thought I should point something out in case you end up doing further upgrades to your GPU.
Because you're using the 2nd PCIE X16 slot both it and your GPU slot are now limited to X8 speeds.

It won't matter with your current GPU but if you update to a GPU that does matter (RTX 3080 or more powerful) you'll see a performance loss by not having access to the full X16.
I don't think you mentioned your CPU and perhaps it would be a bottleneck so you'd be upgrading the board and CPU at that point anyway but it's worth remembering if you carry over and intend to use that PCIE adapter.

Nirnias

Conar wrote: »

Hey.....just stumbled on this thread and thought I should point something out in case you end up doing further upgrades to your GPU.
Because you're using the 2nd PCIE X16 slot both it and your GPU slot are now limited to X8 speeds.

It won't matter with your current GPU but if you update to a GPU that does matter (RTX 3080 or more powerful) you'll see a performance loss by not having access to the full X16.
I don't think you mentioned your CPU and perhaps it would be a bottleneck so you'd be upgrading the board and CPU at that point anyway but it's worth remembering if you carry over and intend to use that PCIE adapter.

Much obliged sir, im actually waiting to get my hands on a 6800XT but it being constantly out of stock for the next few months means it wont be an issue for a while. Id get a 3080 also, but that's been out of stock even longer.

I had not considered this though.

My GPU atm is old enough its an AMD R9 390.
My CPU is a AMD Ryzen 5 2600, just the base clock of 3.4Ghz.

Surprisingly enough i can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Medium settings without much issue with my current setup.

The mobo i wont be upgrading for another few years as i upgarded my mobo, CPU and RAM at the end of 2018, but with your point about GPU still being valid, i will take this in to consideration when i do manage to upgrade my GPU and just remove the 500GB and place the 1TB back in to the M2A slot i think.

Much obliged.

Conar

Nirnias wrote: »

Much obliged sir, im actually waiting to get my hands on a 6800XT but it being constantly out of stock for the next few months means it wont be an issue for a while. Id get a 3080 also, but that's been out of stock even longer.

I had not considered this though.

My GPU atm is old enough its an AMD R9 390.
My CPU is a AMD Ryzen 5 2600, just the base clock of 3.4Ghz.

Surprisingly enough i can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Medium settings without much issue with my current setup.

The mobo i wont be upgrading for another few years as i upgarded my mobo, CPU and RAM at the end of 2018, but with your point about GPU still being valid, i will take this in to consideration when i do manage to upgrade my GPU and just remove the 500GB and place the 1TB back in to the M2A slot i think.

Much obliged.

No worries. It's fairly marginal but it would do my head in. Decent article here testing the different configs.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2104-pcie4-vs-pcie3-gpu-performance/

GPU-Z is handy as it will show you the speed your slot supports (max supported) and the speed it's currently running at (link width).