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New Asus X870E Strix board - M.2 drive disappearing

Cheairnyndahl
Level 9

Hello, just installed my new Asus X870E-E Strix motherboard, loving it so far. When I initially got in to Windows, all of my drives were present (even the new one that wasn't formatted yet was showing in Disk Management) - I updated everything in terms of latest drivers for the motherboard etc, rebooted and enabled EXPO on my RAM, set to 6000MHz with voltages set, didn't touch any other settings...

And now one of my M.2 drives is not showing up in BIOS or in Windows?  I've tried changing the BIOS setting for Bifurcation to GPU+M.2 mode, that doesn't help.  Any suggestions as to what else I can try?  I have a feeling it's related to the whole thing of the GPU slot & the M.2-2 & M.2-3 sharing bandwidth, but the drive that's in one of them is showing up while the other is not now.
I'm going to try disabling EXPO & see if that helps for some reason... wouldn't make any sense if that was it, but perhaps the BIOS version I'm on is messing something up.

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Are you using any port in particular, or does this happen regardless of what port it's plugged in to?  Also, does the BIOS setting for GPU+M.2 Storage make it disappear too, or is that not the case for yours?

Update: I seem to be having further intermittent issues regarding my m.2nvme drive in the secondary m.2 slot. My drive randomly showed back up. However, I have found another issue that is an even bigger pain. My system is unstable if I am using all 4 ram slots. I have a 32gb set of Corsair vengeance but if I add an identical kit my system encounters out of memory errors in event viewer. I chalked this up to a bad kit. I bought a 64gb kit and experience the same issues. My system will lock up intermittently if I have all 96gb installed. I then tried just the 64gb kit and no problem. Very strange. This is even without setting anything and leaving everything on auto in the BIOS.

So I can tell you, 4 sticks is a crapshoot on any motherboard, it's not just with this one - it's actually highly recommended you don't run 4 sticks by most people that do RAM overclocking/board analysis, I.E. Buildzoid/Actually Hardcore Overclocking has said in more than one video "Yes, your motherboard has 4 RAM slots. That's a design flaw, not a feature" - meaning it's not actually intended to be used in any real fashion.  I'm surprised you can even make it in to Windows from just leaving everything on Auto in BIOS, I had to change a lot of settings to get Windows stable enough to even use when I was testing 4 sticks.

I can tell you from my experience mixing kits, and yes it's considered mixing kits even if you use 2 of the "same" kit, because it's not a native 4x?? kit, on AM5 specifically, it either won't work at all, won't be stable, or the highest speed you'll be able to run stable is around 4800-5200MHz.  I tried this with my current 2x48GB kit & the 2x16GB kit I had previously (I needed more RAM for rendering stuff, which is why I got the 96GB kit), on my old motherboard, and I couldn't get it to even BOOT/Train above 4400MHz - which at that point, you're better off just running one kit.

My suggestion would be run the 2x32GB kit, unless you actually NEED more than 64GB of RAM, like I did, in which case it's time to get you a 2x48GB kit like I did - they ain't cheap, but it's really nice to have all that RAM available in 2 sticks.  I got a kit that's on the QVL for the X870E-E Strix (not that the QVL means jacks**t these days), and while it won't run at 6400MHz because my CPU doesn't like running the memory controller that high (at least I think that's the issue), I can run it at 6200MHz CL28 (which faster in terms of latency and overall performance than the EXPO speed on this kit of 6400MHz CL32) with pretty tight timings, but that's a 1.5v VDD, which I don't recommend unless you have a fan blowing on your RAM area, as it's likely settings like what I'm running would lose stability if the sticks get over 50-55C.

If you want to take a gander, there's a non-Royal version of the kit as well for slightly cheaper, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D7QZ7NWF/ it's also available on newegg for about the same price.

Very strange considering I have multiple x570 and x670 boards and do not encounter these issues. Maxed out on the Strix X570 board.

X570 is AM4 - AM4 does not have issues with 4 slots as much as AM5 does.

The mixed 4 sticks I did was on X670E and it was a crapshoot, I gave up because the speed at which it maxed out in terms of stability, it wasn't worth having the extra 32GB of RAM for that trade off...

My X670E-Pro is the board I am running x2 32gig Kingston Beast kits in. Seems stable enough though it's not my daily and I don't torture it as I should.

It happens regardless of which USB 10G port I use on the motherboard.  I had the BIOS settings to Auto for GPU/M.2 sharing. 

But I am now realizing that PCIE1 will revert to x8 if you are using M.2_2 or M.2_3.  I was under the impression when I bought the board that it only happens when using BOTH m.2_2 and m.2_3.  Some Redditers posted this to be the case.  I guess I will just have to move the Samsung drive to m.2_5 now and only use 3 total NVME drives since I really want PCI-E to be at x16.  I primarily use the PC for flight simulation and occasional gaming.  I'm hoping that m.2_5 wont have any issues with the disappearing act, as my OS drive in m.2_1 and another SSD in m.2_4 have not had any issues since I built it.  

Fwazzy
Level 9

I'm also experiencing the same issue on a brand new build with the following specs:

Motherboard: Strix x870e
CPU: Ryzen 7950x3d
Cooling: Ryujin III 360 ARGB AIO
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 4TB x2 (OS in M.2_3, storage in M.2_2)
GPU: TUF Gaming RTX 4080 Super in PCIe slot
PSU: Strix 1200W
RAM: Corsair Dominator 2x32GB (CMP64GX5M2B6000Z30) from the QVL. Changed the profile from the defaul 6200 to 6000.
OS: Windows 11 Pro
BIOS: Updated to latest version

The M.2_2 SSD (Storage drive) has randomly disappeared from Windows but is still visible in the BIOS NVMe controller. Restarting resolves the issue.
Once, the M.2_3 (OS drive) disappeared during a restart. The system booted directly to the BIOS, showing no bootable drives, and the SSD was missing from the NVMe controller. Restarting resolved the issue.

In reading the other posts here, I see a possible issue with using slots 2 and 3 with the GPU. However, I have no idea how to replicate the issue so I'm unsure if this will be a solution or not. I plan to move the storage SSD from slot 2 to slot 1 or 4.

I don't know if this is relevant but my issues began (or at least I noticed) after I changed the two Memory Context Restore BIOS settings from Auto to Enabled. This reduced my BIOS start time from 60+ seconds to 10 seconds, but coincidentally, now I'm having the disappearing SSD issues.

Edit: Has anyone here used UserBenchmark and come across the missing SSD issue?
https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/69049079

Yeah this sounds like exactly the type of weird behavior I was having, then it randomly went away and hasn't cropped up in a week, and I have no idea why - I have fiddled with SO MANY settings in the past week and the drive hasn't disappeared once...

Like literally the only setting I have NOT messed with is the GPU+M.2 Storage setting - I've messed with RAM, FCLK, CPU (ECLK OCing), all of it, and the drive hasn't disappeared once. I have no idea why it was disappearing before and isn't now.

Interesting the Memory Context Restore reduces your boot time that much, I'll have to try enabling it & seeing if it helps with mine.

If your drive is continually disappearing, and you haven't had the board very long, I'd recommend RMAing it with the place you bought it from before the return window runs out.

I really hope Asus realizes this is not an isolated issue and hopefully fixes it with a BIOS update, or recalls the boards & issues replacements.

I think it's gotta be BIOS glitch because of the randomness of it. Didn't have the drive issue until I updated from the 0605 beta to the 0606.