M.2 help

[PurPleY11]

Hi LTT community 

 

I recently purchased a second m.2 storage drive for my system but for some reason windows is not picking it up.

I want it to act as a secondary drive for additional storage and because I had no issues with the first m.2 drive I decided to get a matching one for the second slot 

 

My system is as follows

Asus ROG b450f gaming

Ryzen 5 3600x

Crucial MX500 500gb m.2 (in top m.2 slot)

 

The drive has a small activity light on it which works as normal on the top drive slot but is solid on on the secondary drive, I know it’s obviously getting power but other than that I can’t think what the issue is

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mr fobs]

When adding a new drive to Windows you have to partition it using Disk Manager. If you use the windows search and start searching for partition drive it'll come up with the right option to create a new partition.

 

Once in there you should see your drive as unallocated, just select it and create a new Volume (google which one you need, more than likely simple volume) and follow the instructions!

[SunnyDKShiki]

I checked that m.2 drive's page on Crucial's website and that motherboard's info page on Asus's website, they should work in either slot.

Have you tried each of them in another machine?

[PurPleY11]

30 minutes ago, mr fobs said:

When adding a new drive to Windows you have to partition it using Disk Manager. If you use the windows search and start searching for partition drive it'll come up with the right option to create a new partition.

 

Once in there you should see your drive as unallocated, just select it and create a new Volume (google which one you need, more than likely simple volume) and follow the instructions!

Thanks for replying, the drive is not shown as an allocatable sector

Disk manager only shows my boot drive 

[Flannelist]

Does it show in BIOS? I wonder if you're running into issues with PCIe lanes. Your motherboard manual says if the second m.2 slot is populated that PCIe x16_1 (I assume this is where your graphics card would be slotted) will run at x8 rather than x16. Maybe the m.2 slot is getting disabled rather than switching to x8.

[Cob]

Have you checked if the BIOS allows you to change between SATA and NVME for the M.2 port? These slots can accept either but you have to manually toggle which is. 

[PurPleY11]

10 hours ago, Flannelist said:

Does it show in BIOS? I wonder if you're running into issues with PCIe lanes. Your motherboard manual says if the second m.2 slot is populated that PCIe x16_1 (I assume this is where your graphics card would be slotted) will run at x8 rather than x16. Maybe the m.2 slot is getting disabled rather than switching to x8.

Yeah this seems to me like what's happening but i cant find any way in the BIOS of manually forcing it to run the x16_1 in 8x mode

 

[Flannelist]

On 5/19/2021 at 3:10 AM, PurPleY11 said:

Yeah this seems to me like what's happening but i cant find any way in the BIOS of manually forcing it to run the x16_1 in 8x mode

 

Yes, after looking again I am pretty sure this is what's going on. And i don't see anywhere in the manual for this either, only settings for the other PCIe x16 slots. I might try to clear your CMOS, or update your BIOS if you haven't gotten this figured out yet.