cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

SSD -> M.2 issues

jgadlage
Level 7
I was wondering if you all could help me out with a problem I'm having on a Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard.

My main drive (a 256GB SSD) is running out of space and I would like to upgrade to a 525GB M.2 drive. I installed the M.2 drive and rebooted the computer thinking that i would be able to just boot to my regular drive as usual, and then clone it onto the M.2. When I start up with the M.2 drive installed in my system, my main drive is no longer seen, but my unformatted M.2 is seen.

Any thoughts on how to make this work so I can do the upgrade?

Thank you all for you thoughts and let me know if you need any other information
12,006 Views
8 REPLIES 8

ottoyu34
Level 9
Try a different SATA port, some ports share bandwidth with the m.2 slot which will be disabled when m.2 is installed.

I'll give another SATA port for the main drive and see if it still acts up when I plug in the M.2 drive. Maybe I should format it first and then see if the main drive reappears?.

I have plugged the M.2 drive into the only receiving M.2 slot on the motherboard
1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE model)

JustinThyme
Level 13
Exactly where do you have the second M2 plugged in? The only way I know that it will work correctly is in a PCIe M2 adaptor plugged into PCIe_4 slot



“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, I'm not sure about the former” ~ Albert Einstein

chevell65
Level 12
jgadlage wrote:
I was wondering if you all could help me out with a problem I'm having on a Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard.

My main drive (a 256GB SSD) is running out of space and I would like to upgrade to a 525GB M.2 drive. I installed the M.2 drive and rebooted the computer thinking that i would be able to just boot to my regular drive as usual, and then clone it onto the M.2. When I start up with the M.2 drive installed in my system, my main drive is no longer seen, but my unformatted M.2 is seen.

Any thoughts on how to make this work so I can do the upgrade?

Thank you all for you thoughts and let me know if you need any other information


If you are using a M.2 drive then the first SATA 0 port won't be usable because that lane is now occupied by M.2.

You can then use the next SATA 1 port for your SSD drive.

There are a few other installation tips that may be required which you can see by scrolling to bottom of this link.

UPDATE:
So I was able to get the SSD recognized and boot to my main drive again. I moved my main SSD off of the SATA Express port and put it onto a regular SATA port and problem solved.

Now I have have been able to boot back into my main SSD drive as well as have the M.2 connected to the computer. I can run Acronis to do a direct clone to my new M.2 drive, but when I then try to boot to the M.2 drive while the SSD is disconnected I get more problems. Now I get a constant boot menu that has the Windows 10 circling circles. I have restarted multiple times and that is all I get - no system repair / restore or anything. I guess it just isn't meant to be as my other SSD works fine when I put it back in

Returning the M.2 since it doesn't seem like it is ready for prime time yet and eliminating the frustration - just isn't worth the headache for something that doesn't work.

Darren_Stevens
Level 9
Keep the M.2 & do a clean Windows 10 UEFI install on it, plug the SSD back in later & use it for storage, before you start copy & past onto a USB anything that is important such as photos, documents, ect, & put them back on later.

Even after disconnecting my data and data back up drives and only booting from the M.2 drive, I got the spinning circles of death and nothing else. Probably more OS related issue more than anything, but I have freed up enough space from my 256GB SSD to make it usable for a little while longer (48GB left now).

I have upgraded the BIOS to the latest version for the Z170 Pro Gaming MB to see if that would help, but that didn't (even though the SSD was bootable, but hung on the spinning circles). No, there wasn't any wireless, USB dongles, or other Bluetooth devices plugged into my computer on startup. Just a USB mouse and keyboard connected to the computer and my monitor connected to my GTX1070 through DVI.

No way in the world I am going back and doing a fresh install to Windows 10. I upgraded from Windows 7 up to 10 before the cutoff in August of 2016 so that option is no longer available unless I want to pay for a whole new OS. Beside the point I'm not going to start all over from scratch when a perfectly good working Acronis clone of the OS should work (and has worked in the past). If I stored all of my data and OS on one drive, this would be even more of a headache. Luckily I have my data and my back up data on individual drives to prevent this from happening. I am going to skip doing this upgrade for now as I haven't found a solution to the spinning circles error. I would love the speed increase that the M.2 drive will offer, but maybe a more mature driver set for M.2 or BIOS to handle this feature would cure this problem (either that or MS could fix the spinning circles error as well).

For now, the M.2 drive has been returned, the original SSD has been re-installed and handles OS duties once again without issues.

Darren Stevens wrote:
Keep the M.2 & do a clean Windows 10 UEFI install on it, plug the SSD back in later & use it for storage, before you start copy & past onto a USB anything that is important such as photos, documents, ect, & put them back on later.

Darren_Stevens
Level 9
Fair enough, it's a shame tho the M.2's are a great bit of kit, if u ever decide to reinstall there is no need to buy a new win 10 OS, just download the media creation tool from Microsoft follow the prompts, copy win 10 onto USB & install, the OS will recognise your previous win 10 instalation & activate it, also your original Win 7 product key will work, u may just have to activate it on line on the Microsoft site, cheers.