Windows 11 BSOD's then boots to BIOS - OS Drive has disappeared

Drew Gourley · July 2, 2023

Hello everybody,

System:

AMD 5800X3D
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
64gb GSkill DDR4 3600
Gigabyte Aorus NVMe 1tb SSD PCIe Gen 4 (Windows 11 OS Drive)

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2tb NVMe SSD PCIe Gen 3 (Hot Storage)
2x WD Black 4tb SATA spinning metal in RAID-1 (Cold Storage)

EVGA GeForce RTX 3070ti FTW3

I have a weird one for you, at least I think so.

A few months ago, I came into my office in the morning to find my computer had restarted itself and was sitting in the BIOS. I didn't think much of it, checked settings, and just went to "Save & Exit". There was something I hadn't noticed though, or so I think, more about that later.

Last night, my system BSOD'd, "Critical_Process_Died". I patiently waited for it to do its thing and the system restarted itself... into the BIOS. This time I more diligently checked settings and saw that there was no boot drive, that explains why we were kicked to the BIOS.

Shid-fard-pant, my OS drive died... I remembered this had happened before, but maybe I just didn't notice that the drive was missing when my morning-brain was checking settings a few months ago. Hail mary... just hit "Save & Exit".

Voila! System booted just fine. (Furiously starts backup software, BSOD, BIOS -- SHIT)

The problem now is that the BSOD to BIOS is happening about every hour or so, and it is getting harder and harder for the system to recognize it in this configuration.

I moved the OS drive to the bottom NVMe slot on the motherboard and it is working without issue (Furiously starts backup software, image created successfully -- YAY)

Not sure why exactly, maybe reduction to Gen3 speeds, maybe just the different slot in general.

This presents so many questions...

Did my NVMe slot go bad? Does that even happen? If not, am I getting degraded performance to those PCI lanes? In that case, why is my graphics card running just fine? Could the drive be dying, but slowly, resulting in Gen4 speeds making it disappear from the system? Is my CPU dying?

I just don't know where to go from here on finding what exactly is wrong, or needs to be replaced.

Sawa Takahashi · July 2, 2023

You can use the utility CristalDiskInfo to check the drive's internal diagnostic has to tell.

There are numerous reasons why a SSD could act up. It may be that the SSD is faulty or requires firmware upgrade or requires a certain driver or that Win 11 doesn't like it...

Only way to tell is to use another similar SSD into that NVMe slot and see what happens. But even then, it's hard to replicate some problems. If your drive is running ok in the seconde slot and the system keeps stable, I think you found an acceptable compromise. If your components are still under warranty, you can always contact customer support and see if an RMA is in order.

Good luck !

Drew Gourley · July 2, 2023

I guess I sort of confirmed now that it is a bad slot. I moved my storage drive up to the top slot and it was undetected in the BIOS. All disks show perfectly healthy and are high 90's in life-left (The computer is 4 years old, pretty good!)

Anyway, all working now... considering I wasn't drag-racing any storage stuff, the loss of Gen4 speeds isn't a big deal.

So do NVMe slots just die sometimes? Is this indicative of a larger issue I should be worried about in the future. Should I expect to be replacing my motherboard soon?