Using 2 M.2 Drives Causes 0xc000000e Boot Error {SOLUTION?]

[Shinigaml604]

Hi,

I just built a custom PC with a ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO (WI-FI) + 2, SAMSUNG 970 PRO attached to my MOBO + a HDD for storage purposes.

SAMSUNG 970 PRO M.2 2280 512GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 64L V-NAND 2-bit MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7P512BW
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147693

My goal was to originally set up Windows on a single M.2 + install Software/Programs & then I would use the other M.2 as a Disk Cache for improved After Effects editing performance.

However, I would always get a 0xc000000e Boot Error ("the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible") before, during, and after formatting. Sometimes I would be able to access BIOS and Windows, and sometimes it won't let me. And so, to remedy this I changed both of my M.2 as RAID 0 level and formatted windows to this new combined drive, and thus the problem was gone. I'm running a RAID 0 without any Boot Errors but now I am left with a single C drive + my HDD... I am forced to disk cache to my C drive (since my HDD is a NAS HDD and is much slower than a standard HDD drive) which slows down my After Effects performance...

How do I solve this issue, if say I want to give it another try and separate my 2 M.2 drives in order to use them separately?

Thank you.

[dingo99]

Shinigaml604 wrote:

However, I would always get a 0xc000000e Boot Error ("the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible") before, during, and after formatting.

Can you give a little more detail about what exactly you're doing and when it fails? Are you cloning a previous Windows installation? And perhaps was the previous install RAID-based)?

Anyway, the "inaccessible boot device" error often can be cleared by booting into safe mode. When you see the error, wait for the system to reboot a couple times until it goes into automatic repair. Then, go through the troubleshooting/advanced/start-up menus until the system reboots in safe mode. Once in safe mode, just reboot once again and the error might go away.

[Shinigaml604]

dingo99 wrote:
Can you give a little more detail about what exactly you're doing and when it fails? Are you cloning a previous Windows installation? And perhaps was the previous install RAID-based)?

Anyway, the "inaccessible boot device" error often can be cleared by booting into safe mode. When you see the error, wait for the system to reboot a couple times until it goes into automatic repair. Then, go through the troubleshooting/advanced/start-up menus until the system reboots in safe mode. Once in safe mode, just reboot once again and the error might go away.

Well, sometimes this may even happen during a format, or even right after a format. Or just while I have installed windows and using it "Just fine". But then whenever I restart or turn on my computer, I won't be able to boot to Windows (Maybe after getting this error multiple times and going into Bios, there's a slight chance my computer actually lets me boot to Windows. So it's not 100% that this would happen to me. I only got this boot error whenever I did NOT have a RAID-based installation. A RAID-based installation where I used both of my M.2 SSD's as a RAID 0 fixed this issue altogether. Also, it was on a freshly built custom PC. So all the settings in BIOS were default.

I'm not sure what to make of this lol...

[dingo99]

Okay, that's very weird then...
have you tried updating the SSDs to their latest firmware?

[Shinigaml604]

dingo99 wrote:
Okay, that's very weird then...
have you tried updating the SSDs to their latest firmware?

Didn't know that was a thing, how do I do that?

[dingo99]

Install the Samsung Magician software. It will give you the option to update the firmware if it's out of date.

[mdzcpa]

Clear your BIOS and make sure you manually set your boot priority to the m.2 that you want to boot with. Typically UEFI finds the boot drive on either m.2 when to are installed but it is worth a shot. You may need a fresh windows installation it sounds to me.