M.2 SSD not being detected

[kazuma]

I need some input guys. I made a workstation a few weeks ago for our office place. I was using a MSI B250M Mortar Arctic board and I ended up using a Crucial MX500 1TB M.2 SSD for storage. Every now and then, if the system auto restarts, it won't detect the M.2 unless you manually restart the computer. Now, my workstation in the office is using a Sandisk X400 2280 512 GB M.2 SSD and I had the same problem after windows did an auto update and restarted my workstation. When it rebooted, it doesn't detect the M.2 ( it was where I installed Windows 10 ), so I ended up going to bios just to find out that the boot priority somehow got shifted to my Mushkin 500GB SSD ( Was using this for storage ). After switching the M.2 as the primary boot drive (which it should have in the first place), everything went okay and it never happened again. 

 

Now, the workstation that I was talking that was having the same problem (one of my boss is using it), that happened twice to it now. Got a complain this morning that it happened again but once they manually restarted it, everything was fine. 

 

All I could say (and think of) was that it was because of a windows update. For some reason, after installing an update, the drive boot priority orders are getting shuffled for some reason unless you do a manual restart.

 

Any of you guys experienced this before? Any suggestion as to how to get this thing straighten out once and for all? 

[seagate_surfer]

Hello kazuma,

 

Boot order shuffling hardly happens, what you are describing sounds more like power saving features that lower the amount of voltage that the hard drives consumes when it is not being used, it happens to be that some motherboards cannot power on back the device from idle, in other words the hard drive doesn't receive the signal/electric pulses that tell him to wake up and work on full power. I would do a firmware upgrade here and if possible would contact the manufacturer to disable any power saving features from the drive or do one upgrade in your BIOS, hopefully it will fix this issue.

[kazuma]

12 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Hello kazuma,

 

Boot order shuffling hardly happens, what you are describing sounds more like power saving features that lower the amount of voltage that the hard drives consumes when it is not being used, it happens to be that some motherboards cannot power on back the device from idle, in other words the hard drive doesn't receive the signal/electric pulses that tell him to wake up and work on full power. I would do a firmware upgrade here and if possible would contact the manufacturer to disable any power saving features from the drive or do one upgrade in your BIOS, hopefully it will fix this issue.

Thank you so much for the reply. The firmware upgrade was the only "solution" that I could think of if it ever happens again. Although in Crucial's website, there is a warning on the download firmware page that says:

"WARNING: Crucial recommends that you back up or make copies of all important files before installing this firmware update. This firmware updated is done entirely at your own risk. If performed correctly , there will be no loss of system or user data currently stored on the drive. However, if the firmware process is interrupted, your solid state drive might not function properly. If the firmware update is done on a notebook computer, Crucial recommends that the computer is plugged in to avoid interruption."

As much as I could, I am trying to avoid to do the firmware upgrade just because of that warning about data loss since it's my boss's workstation. If there will be a data loss event, he is going to eat me alive for sure. I guess for now I would wait and see if it happens again (I am hoping not) and will try to look for other options to try out. 

[seagate_surfer]

Alright! But please be advised that all manufacturers have something similar in their websites, this warning is given to people because if the firmware upgrade gets interrupted for some reason, the drive gets bricked. In fact I've never seen a failed firmware upgrade, so this warning does not mean it frequently fails but that the upgrade cannot be interrupted, feel free to do the upgrade!

[kazuma]

2 hours ago, seagate_surfer said:

Alright! But please be advised that all manufacturers have something similar in their websites, this warning is given to people because if the firmware upgrade gets interrupted for some reason, the drive gets bricked. In fact I've never seen a failed firmware upgrade, so this warning does not mean it frequently fails but that the upgrade cannot be interrupted, feel free to do the upgrade!

Hey!

 

Just learned that today. Because to be honest, whenever I'm putting a system together, storage is the last thing that I'm looking at. Didn't even know some storage would need some sort of firmware upgrade nowadays, but it's a good thing that I encountered this and learned something new. This knowledge will definitely be of use for future troubleshooting. 

 

Thank you for the information and help! 

 

P.S

 

I just did the firmware update today and looks like everything went well. I just need to do a restart of the system later and see what happens. I'll try to put the system in to sleep mode and wake it up to see if the problem gets fixed. I could not do that right now since my boss is currently working on a critical file (really dont want to bug him right now or he might eat my soul up).

[seagate_surfer]

You are welcome! That's why we are here, right? For learning... I guess many of us didn't notice the importance of the storage media until anything happens or start working in this industry or start studying the fundamentals and use cases of storage media, that's normal and I am pretty sure you won't be the last one. Hopefully your system will run smoothly from now on.