cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Help with M.2 Samsung 960 Evo 250GB.

ReformedSS
Level 7
Hello guys, I seem to be having trouble installing my M.2 SSD. I've followed every forum post regarding this issue, but every time I get to the windows install section I don't see my driver listed for me to install windows 10 pro on to it. Currently windows 10 pro is installed on my HDD. I made a bootable usb using the Microsoft media creation tool.

Full system specs:
Motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Bios: 3401 - Can't update to 3402 as Ez installer doesn't find it using the internet, also tried doing it manually and it fails to read the .cap file.
Ram: 16GB @2133Mhz
HDD: Weston Digital Blue 1TB
M.2: Samsung 960 Evo 250GB (SSD0581 (MZ-V6E250BW))
OS: Win 10 Pro

I've tried all the forum post I found from tomshardware, but all end up in the same result, not being able to find the SSD as a driver. Samsung 960 Evo driver is a .exe therefore everytime I try and run it I get "Samsung NVM express device is not connected. Connect device and try again." If someone could give me some steps to follow that would be great, I've been struggling to get it to work for 4 days now, I can't talk to Asus support as their opening times is 9am-5pm and I finish work after 5pm. I would have to take a day off just to talk to them.*
*
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
*CPU: Intel - Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (£199.99 @ Aria PC)
*CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (£25.66 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: Asus - Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£125.80 @ Alza)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£123.60 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£114.60 @ Aria PC) Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£41.88 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Video Card (£406.80 @ Aria PC)
Case: NZXT - S340 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case (£79.33 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA - 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£58.50 @ Aria PC)
Case Fan: be quiet! - SilentWings 3 pwm 59.5 CFM 140mm Fan (£18.49 @ Aria PC)
*Case Fan: be quiet! - SilentWings 3 pwm 59.5 CFM 140mm Fan (£18.49 @ Aria PC)
Case Fan: be quiet! - SilentWings 3 PWM 50.5 CFM 120mm Fan (£17.59 @ Aria PC)
*Case Fan: be quiet! - SilentWings 3 PWM 50.5 CFM 120mm Fan (£17.59 @ Aria PC)

How the M.2 is installed:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/255370137434062849/323268892724297738/20170611_021407.jpg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/255370137434062849/323267003517370369/20170611_020718.jpg*

*
22,476 Views
28 REPLIES 28

Chino wrote:
Clear your CMOS. And install Windows 10 in UEFI mode.


Been there done that. Got a return number from Samsung and when there experts tested the board they found nothing wrong and sent it back. The problem is I CAN, that is Disc Manager and DiskPart can see the 960 Evo NVMe board, but can not see any bytes or space on the un intialized drive so Both apps give the 'incorrect function' error. You can not install Windows 10 on a drive with no space

I tried the board again after it's return from Samsung and same result. Do not purchase Samsung 960 Evo NVMe SSD for any X99 Intel Chipset until this is resolved, for I have seen a lot of posts on forums about this so I know it is not just myself. I have since installed a Western Digital Black 256GB NVMe M.2 PCIe X 4 drive and it initialized and Windows installed in under 15 min from USB, so I know it is not something I am doing wrong.

Don't partition your drive though as MBR. Leave it on the default setting for Windows 10 install. That did catch me out hi.

towerelect
Level 7
Well GLAD to see I am not the only one. I have just been told by Samsung that the 960 Evo 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD I sent back to them was not defective yet I could not initialize this drive under Disc Manager or via the command line in Admin mode using the DiskPart utility. Kept getting the dreaded 'incorrect function' error.

System X99 Asus Rampage 10 Motherboard Intel i7 5960X 3GHz latest BIOS

Even worse putting the 960 Evo in the M.2 slot and setting up the BIOS correctly, when I attempted to run the Samsung NVMe Driver .exe it crashed Windows with the blue screen of death every time. The NVMe always showed with ZERO Bytes size. I checked its firmware from the Samsung utility on the Website and it was the latest so at that point I returned the board to Samsung.

It is interesting to note that the replacement Western Digital Black M.2x4 NVMe board installed, initialized and loaded Windows 10 Pro from a USB stick with no problems and this is what my PC boots from now. So this is not my problem and I did nothing wrong. I will open a thread about that successful install to help others with the Samsung 960 Evo problem so they are not alone. See attachment for the current NVMe SSD status.

towerelect wrote:
Well GLAD to see I am not the only one. I have just been told by Samsung that the 960 Evo 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD I sent back to them was not defective yet I could not initialize this drive under Disc Manager or via the command line in Admin mode using the DiskPart utility. Kept getting the dreaded 'incorrect function' error.

System X99 Asus Rampage 10 Motherboard Intel i7 5960X 3GHz latest BIOS

Even worse putting the 960 Evo in the M.2 slot and setting up the BIOS correctly, when I attempted to run the Samsung NVMe Driver .exe it crashed Windows with the blue screen of death every time. The NVMe always showed with ZERO Bytes size. I checked its firmware from the Samsung utility on the Website and it was the latest so at that point I returned the board to Samsung.

It is interesting to note that the replacement Western Digital Black M.2x4 NVMe board installed, initialized and loaded Windows 10 Pro from a USB stick with no problems and this is what my PC boots from now. So this is not my problem and I did nothing wrong. I will open a thread about that successful install to help others with the Samsung 960 Evo problem so they are not alone. See attachment for the current NVMe SSD status.



Where do I find these setting you have on your motherboard? I have a Asus Z170 - Pro gaming I don't have access to that or I don't know where to find it*:confused:


Also, I started a other thread in a different sub-section the same time I posted this you can check it out here (Got a response quickly there) -*https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?93885-HELP-WITH-M-2-SAMSUNG-960-EVO-250GB-Asus-Z170-Pro-Ga...

towerelect
Level 7
It is interesting to note that my 960 Evo 256 Samsung NVMe SSD was also supplied by the same company. As I live in Malta Samsung UK washed there hands of me refusing product support as they claimed it was a 'grey import' originally supplied to the Netherlands!! Thankfully Samsung in Germany did help and they are swapping it out. Well actually they claim they found no fault with my unit. I have asked them to initialize and format it for Windows before they return it to me as I could not on the Asus Rampage 10 motherboard (X99 Intel chipset).

Any attempt at initializing this drive gave the 'incorrect function' error in Disc Manager and DiskPart and the NVMe drive showed in Disc Manager as having Zero Bytes size and that was the basic problem all along. So I have to ask have you attempted to initialize this drive first, for until you do that Windows will not see it.

You have to run disk manager under Windows, Initialize the drive as GPT (not MBR) and format it and give it a drive letter before Windows installer can see it. This is the bit I could not do myself so clearly Asus and Samsung have a big problem with this.

As I reported I had not a single problem with the Western Digital Black NVMe board on the very same PC so something is not right that is for sure.

Little confusion, so let's clear that up. The Samsung Evo 960 Solid State Drive is an NVMe PCIe M.2 X 4 device and is NOT M.2 SATA unless of course you fit two of them and after you have initialized them, set up the Motherboard BIOS to make them into a single SCSI 0 (striped array) for even greater Speed. So just like SATA you can fit 2 or more NVMe SSD's and make a SCSI array.

The Samsung 850 Pro series for example is a standard 2.5 inch Solid State Drive with a standard SATA interface and not M.2 type E single slot cut out with just 4 pins.

The Intel 750 series are also standard 2.5 inch sized solid state drives but they too are Ultra FAST NVMe PICIe X 4 and have a U2 adapter cable but basically are the same as the 960 Evo just larger with a different connector. They have an advantage of a built in heat-sink as the M2 socket drives can overheat. For desktops the U2 Sockets behave just like standard SATA on the motherboard but of course are super fast with non of the slow down caused by SATA as they are direct on the PCIe X 4 bus to the CPU.

My problem is that I can not initialize this drive. Does anyone remember when they 1st installed the drive the fact that you have to run Disc Manager (or Disk-part) to make a simple partition and format it first before you can do any stuff like assign drive letters to it.

JustinThyme
Level 13
If you have raid enabled in the BIOS (under PCH controller advanced tab) then you have to install IRST drivers during the windows installation before the drive can be seen. If you are not using raid and dont inted to use it on other drives set this to AHCI. Also as Chino stated any SSD can be finicky with OS install. Ive done all mine with UEFI enabled and CSM disabled.
FYI PCIe_4 has nothing to do with the M2 slot. That is for the last PCIe slot and you will need to set it correctly if you are using a PCIe>M2 adaptor.
@towerelect please keep in mind the OP is referring to a Z170.



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

Well NVMe boot drives are the future of Laptops and top end PC's and that is due to the insanely fast read write speeds afforded by PCIe 4 lane direct access to your CPU without being bogged down with the SATA interface which to be fair was designed a long time ago for mechanical drives, few of which spun at speeds above 7200 RPM.

With no moving parts and direct access through 4 lanes to the CPU obviously NVMe PCIe X 4 has a long way to go, but this is cutting edge technology and Asus and Samsung are in a learning curve here.

There has been no updates from either for a few days now, but for what it is worth, of the many thousands of top end machines logged on the PassMark bench marking software system a search today shown not one single machine has the combination of Samsung Evo 960 NVMe SSD and the Asus Rampage 10 motherboard, and that was allowing for ANY CPU and Memory setup. That speaks volumes to me, for no one has bench-marked this mix, and the fact that I can not initialize the EVO 960 on the Asus Rampage board, and Samsung and Asus have not got back to me with any fix is not a good sign.

The other thing I must remind you all here is that I am an advanced IT user and I installed the WD Black 256GB NVMe PCIe X 4 board and installed Windows 10 Pro on it first go around on this same Rampage 10 Motherboard, but the RMA'ed 'no fault found' Evo 960 still gave the same problems.

At the moment I doubt NVMe is the solution for storage only drives due to the lack of sockets on most motherboards. Even on the Rampage you are limited to just 2 drives, though I do believe it is possible to run 4 if you only have one Video Card, but I run 2 Nvida 1080's in SLI config when editing HD Video for greater rendering speed with the software I use so that rules out 4 NVMe drives for me.

HisEvilness
Level 7
Easy, press windows key + X and go to disk managment.
You need to populate the disk i installed one last week.