New M.2 randomly not being recognized

[swSephy]

Hi all! I just built a new system (except for that new GPU I'm waiting on) and have had an issue regarding storage. I'll try and keep this brief but I want to include all the details I can think of. I have a Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard and two 970 EVO PLUS 1tb nvme m.2 drives. The drive in the bottom slot only has games on it: Steam, Origin, etc. A week ago I was in the middle of a F1 2020 race and the game suddenly crashed with a warning about not being able to validate the game files and Steam wouldn't respond. I restarted my PC and the drive didn't show up anymore. So I shut it down, took the drive out, put it back in, and then everything was fine. So fast forward a week and I was in the middle of a Warzone match and got a similar error mid-game and Battle.net wouldn't respond. I restarted my PC and again the drive wasn't showing up. So I did the same thing by turning off the PC and reseating the drive and now it's working. Is this indicative of a drive going bad or is something up with the motherboard? I'm very confused here and appreciate any advice or info anyone can give.