M.2 SSD not working or slot on Motherboard?

Z

ZEUStheDJ

New Member
Hello everyone,

I just finished building my first gaming pc and it ran perfectly for the first week. Yesterday after work I got home and turned it on and it would not boot into windows and only boot to bios (MSI B450M Pro-VDH motherboard). After checking the bios menu it showed that my new Crucial MX500 M.2 SSD was not connected. I shut it down, removed graphics card (as the M.2 slot is just behind it) and unscrewed it and pulled it out, then replaced everything and powered it back on ( I tried this twice). Nothing still, just booted into bios and showing as nothing connected. This is weird because, just the night before I had been running the machine and playing games and now today (yesterday) would not boot? I fully powered it down the night before as I normally would any computer.

My question is this. How do I know if it's my M.2 SSD that's bad, or if it's the M.2 slot on the motherboard that is bad? Also, How would I go about erasing the data on the M.2 before returning for a refund/exchange if it's bad?

Thanks in advanced, and new member by the way :)
 
_Kyle_

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
This is odd.

It does seem that it is dead. It may have overheated as M.2's do get toasty, and being behind the GPU isn't much help either, especially if you are gaming.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
That's the bad thing about M2 slots now. There really is no way to test drives like you can with a sata or IDE drive. About the only thing you can do is try it in another system. Hopefully you know someone who has a motherboard that has one. Or possibly take it to a pc repair place and have them test it.
 
Z

ZEUStheDJ

New Member
I've replaced the M.2 with a 500GB Samsung 860 Evo I had as extra storage in my laptop after I couldn't get the motherboard to recognize the M.2 and reinstalled windows, drivers and games (time consuming) so my PC is back up & running, but I did want to have an M.2.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
M.2 shares bandwidth with the PCI-E lanes. Frequently there's a toggle in the BIOS that lets you pick one or the other and for whatever reason it's off by default. Check your motherboard manual carefully, I bet it's a toggle in there that lets you pick to use the M.2 slot or the PCI-E lane. I had this issue on my brothers Gigabyte board when I built his 2700X build.

Edit: Reread and it sounds like it was working before and quit. Still might have gotten toggled by mistake or a BIOS flash.
 
Z

ZEUStheDJ

New Member
Darren said:
M.2 shares bandwidth with the PCI-E lanes. Frequently there's a toggle in the BIOS that lets you pick one or the other and for whatever reason it's off by default. Check your motherboard manual carefully, I bet it's a toggle in there that lets you pick to use the M.2 slot or the PCI-E lane. I had this issue on my brothers Gigabyte board when I built his 2700X build.

Edit: Reread and it sounds like it was working before and quit. Still might have gotten toggled by mistake or a BIOS flash.
Click to expand...

I've checked and the configuration is still the same. I'm thinking the M.2 was just bad or overheated :( Thanks!
 
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