Samsung 970 Evo Plus installation issue

Soviet · 5 Sep 2020 at 15:21

Hi all,

I've just today installed a new 1Tb Samsung M.2 970 Evo onto my motherboard, with the intention of it being a storage device and not to be the boot drive.

However, the PC keeps trying to boot off of the 970 and not my pre-existing boot drive. When I've gone to change the boot options in the BIOS, the 970 is the only visible drive.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Asus Rog Strix B350 mobo

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Andy

orbitalwalsh · 5 Sep 2020 at 15:31

Soviet said:
Hi all,

I've just today installed a new 1Tb Samsung M.2 970 Evo onto my motherboard, with the intention of it being a storage device and not to be the boot drive.

However, the PC keeps trying to boot off of the 970 and not my pre-existing boot drive. When I've gone to change the boot options in the BIOS, the 970 is the only visible drive.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Asus Rog Strix B350 mobo

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Andy

What's your other drive (sata 2.5"/ sata m.2 , HDD or m.2 NVMe ?

Pending on which,nyour boards layout and where you've plugged it into, drive might not be readable

Soviet · 5 Sep 2020 at 15:43

orbitalwalsh said:
What's your other drive (sata 2.5"/ sata m.2 , HDD or m.2 NVMe ?

Pending on which,nyour boards layout and where you've plugged it into, drive might not be readable

I've got a Samsung EVO 850 SSD as my Windows drive, along with a Sata 2.5 HDD as a storage drive. These have been left as they are and the M.2 NVMe has been installed into the board.

Cheers

Soviet · 5 Sep 2020 at 15:51

I've taken the 970 Evo out and the PC boots fine and both the 850 SSD and the HDD are visible in the BIOS again, weirdly. :confused:

MrRockliffe · 5 Sep 2020 at 16:00

Soviet said:
I've taken the 970 Evo out and the PC boots fine and both the 850 SSD and the HDD are visible in the BIOS again, weirdly.

Perhaps the M.2 disables the SATA ports that they’re plugged into - try changing them

Soviet · 5 Sep 2020 at 17:58

MrRockliffe said:
Perhaps the M.2 disables the SATA ports that they’re plugged into - try changing them

Thank you! I established that several ports were disabled by the board, so I've switched everything and now it's working perfectly.

t31os · 5 Sep 2020 at 18:05

Apparently the M2 slot shares bandwidth with sata ports 5&6 so they're disabled when an M2 drive is installed, presumably you have the vanishing drive(s) in those ports. If the ports aren't tied up with other devices, move the drive(s) to ports 1-4.

Source: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?95186-ROG-Strix-B350-M-2-disables-SATA-Ports-5-and-6

Soviet · 5 Sep 2020 at 19:04

t31os said:
Apparently the M2 slot shares bandwidth with sata ports 5&6 so they're disabled when an M2 drive is installed, presumably you have the vanishing drive(s) in those ports. If the ports aren't tied up with other devices, move the drive(s) to ports 1-4.

Source: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?95186-ROG-Strix-B350-M-2-disables-SATA-Ports-5-and-6

Yeah that was exactly the issue! A good example to always read the manual to be fair.

t31os · 5 Sep 2020 at 23:43

Not sure it's covered in the manual tbh, i did have a quick skim through and couldn't find anything making this clear.

At least you have a good idea of what's going on and have your issue sorted now.

Saul Farrell · 7 Sep 2020 at 15:01

Yeah I believe when you use the M.2, sata ports 5 and 6 are disabled (or however many your mobo has then the last 2 are disabled...)