# NVMe SSD not recognized by the motherboard



## mrtksc54 (Sep 14, 2020)

Hello ,

I bought a kingston a2000 nvme ssd but my motherboard not recognize ssd.My MB is Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3. i try all settings but no different.
also my BIOS version is the last version f15b.



My BIOS Settings = AHCI ENABLED , CSM DİSABLED , SECURE BOOT ENABLED.
thank you for help


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## Mussels (Sep 14, 2020)

Give us the complete system specs as well as a photo of where the NVME drive is installed - that board has two slots, and you might need to change BIOS settings to enable the second one.


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## basco (Sep 14, 2020)

and what´s in the offboard sata controller config? if there is asmedia disable it

did ya try with secure boot=off


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## mrtksc54 (Sep 14, 2020)

Mussels said:


> Give us the complete system specs as well as a photo of where the NVME drive is installed - that board has two slots, and you might need to change BIOS settings to enable the second one.



My cpu is i5 8600k and i use 8x2 gb ram XPG ram and cooler master 750W psu. As you said my motherboard has two slots . i try both of them.

I also remove other storage hardware while trying to new nvme ssd.When I plug in nvme ssd and start the computer for the first time It has been waiting for a long time at the gigabyte logo, and then I can enter the bios . I need to reset it to be able to enter it quickly.



Thank you for help.


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## nguyen (Sep 14, 2020)

I have the Z370 Gaming 5 and the M.2 PCIe SSD doesn't show in the BIOS either, it only shows as Windows Boot Manager when you have Win10 installed on it.
However Win10 would recognize it just fine,  right click on Windows Logo and select Disk Management to see if your new SSD is listed, if it is there just initialize it.
I guess slightly older boards don't have NVME driver incorporated but Windows 10 do, so it's fine.


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## mrtksc54 (Sep 14, 2020)

nguyen said:


> I have the Z370 Gaming 5 and the M.2 PCIe SSD doesn't show in the BIOS either, it only shows as Windows Boot Manager when you have Win10 installed on it.
> However Win10 would recognize it just fine,  right click on Windows Logo and select Disk Management to see if your new SSD is listed, if it is there just initialize it.
> I guess slightly older boards don't have NVME driver incorporated but Windows 10 do, so it's fine.



I was hoping it would appear in windows disk management, but it is not there. It does not exist in Windows Boot Manager. I run NVMe ssd on another computer and installed windows 10. But again it does not boot on my gigabyte z370. i guess i am pretty unlucky. 

I don't know what else I can try.


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## nguyen (Sep 14, 2020)

mrtksc54 said:


> I was hoping it would appear in windows disk management, but it is not there. It does not exist in Windows Boot Manager. I run NVMe ssd on another computer and installed windows 10. But again it does not boot on my gigabyte z370. i guess i am pretty unlucky.
> 
> I don't know what else I can try.



yeah maybe it's DOA ? you can try putting your Kinston drive into the other computer to see if it's there.


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## mrtksc54 (Sep 14, 2020)

I think ssd works on all computers except my motherboard  There is no problem with ssd, it was working fine on the other computer.


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## Mussels (Sep 14, 2020)

Could you reset the BIOS to optimised defaults and go from there?

Obvious user error mistakes can happen too, like installing as MBR on the other system thats not recognised since the new one has CSM disabled


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## mrtksc54 (Sep 14, 2020)

basco said:


> and what´s in the offboard sata controller config? if there is asmedia disable it
> 
> did ya try with secure boot=off



there is empty. 


I take the bios as default and try again but unfortunately the same problem. I guess this ssd is not working because it is not in the compatibility list of the motherboard. 
I'm trying to try all the possibilities but nothing has changed. On another computer it was plug and play.


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## Caring1 (Sep 17, 2020)

nguyen said:


> I have the Z370 Gaming 5 and the M.2 PCIe SSD doesn't show in the BIOS either.........
> I guess slightly older boards don't have NVME driver incorporated but Windows 10 do, so it's fine.


NVME has been native since Z97 boards. *shrugs*


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## nguyen (Sep 17, 2020)

Caring1 said:


> NVME has been native since Z97 boards. *shrugs*



Nah the BIOS needs to have the specific NVME driver for the particular brand, that doesn't mean you can't use it though.
As I said my Aorus Z97 gaming 5 doesn't detect any NVME drive, however I can still install Win10 on the NVME drive and boot from it after that.


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## mirh (Dec 31, 2020)

I'm not sure why you would need vendor-specific drivers. What year is this?
It should actually be all about a small DXE (or at least after some quick diffing of my MSI Z97 Gaming 7 1.06 bios with the original one that didn't recognize nvme at all, that was an obvious giveaway)

And windows being able to see it isn't news. Booting if the firmware is oblivious to it is weird though. Maybe your ssds come with a special option ROM.


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## newtekie1 (Dec 31, 2020)

nguyen said:


> ah the BIOS needs to have the specific NVME driver for the particular brand



I've never seen that before. That is the entire point of the NVMe standard. It uses a standard communication system, there are no drivers needed.


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## Chaba422 (Dec 31, 2020)

type Disk managment in windows search bar,  "create and format hard disk partritions" should show up, click on that, and from there u can look for ur new NVME SSD and right click format it and give it Assigned leter, and it should show up


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## INSTG8R (Dec 31, 2020)

nguyen said:


> Nah the BIOS needs to have the specific NVME driver


Windows might I know mine has one but Z97 would just need the latest BIOS for good measure and there is definitely and NVME section in the BIOS I had no slots on my Z97 so I can’t say what the NVME options were but might be worth finding that setting.


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## Mussels (Jan 1, 2021)

NVME is universal, BIOS updates may have been needed as standards progressed but its 'driver free' with rare exceptions
(Samsung have an optional driver for example, but they also work on the standard one)


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## nguyen (Jan 1, 2021)

Mussels said:


> NVME is universal, BIOS updates may have been needed as standards progressed but its 'driver free' with rare exceptions
> (Samsung have an optional driver for example, but they also work on the standard one)



This is what it says in my BIOS



And I'm running the AORUS Z370 Gaming 5 which is almost identical to OP's

Doesn't stop me from using the NVME drive though, been using this for 3 years already (Plextor PX-512M8PeG, MLC NAND FTW )


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 1, 2021)

whats the NVME config settings under the peripherals BIOS tab?


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## nguyen (Jan 1, 2021)




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## Mussels (Jan 1, 2021)

I love how the text goes off the screen, that's clearly some top level BIOS bug there


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## nguyen (Jan 1, 2021)

Mussels said:


> I love how the text goes off the screen, that's clearly some top level BIOS bug there



Probably because I'm using Ultra Wide 1440p screen, these BIOSes are old after all


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 1, 2021)

nguyen said:


> View attachment 181816


there ya go... the answer to all the problems....


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## nguyen (Jan 1, 2021)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> there ya go... the answer to all the problems....



Well like I told OP who has pretty much the same board, the BIOS doesn't recognize the NVME drive but I installed Win10 just fine. Probably had to go through some hoops but it was so long ago I forgot , some googling would help though.


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## Jetster (Jan 1, 2021)

For some reason these don't show in the BIOS until you have an active partition. But the W10 install can see it


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## mirh (Jan 1, 2021)

If you need an active partition for the thing to work, then you are most definitively booting with BIOS/MBR (or is it possible for such a bug to still linger after a decade?)

Anyway, I just checked the Z370AG5 bios with uefitool and I see no nvme reference.
I wonder if gigabyte itself isn't relying on a legacy BIOS option rom (which you aren't clearly using since CSM is disabled), *but* your plextor SSD has an UEFI one that even though not being accepted by the setup GUI, eventually works when it's time to matter.
Intel also has some very.. _diversified_ guidance across vendors.


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## nguyen (Jan 2, 2021)

mirh said:


> If you need an active partition for the thing to work, then you are most definitively booting with BIOS/MBR (or is it possible for such a bug to still linger after a decade?)
> 
> Anyway, I just checked the Z370AG5 bios with uefitool and I see no nvme reference.
> I wonder if gigabyte itself isn't relying on a legacy BIOS option rom (which you aren't clearly using since CSM is disabled), *but* your plextor SSD has an UEFI one that even though not being accepted by the setup GUI, eventually works when it's time to matter.
> Intel also has some very.. _diversified_ guidance across vendors.



Well if I remember right, I used Rufus to put the win10 installation onto an USB. In Rufus, set the partition scheme to *GPT* and Target system to *UEFI*. Only then can the Win10 installation recognize the NVME drive. 
The PC has been working flawlessly so I don't want to mess around with the booting sequence. 
From your link seems like some NVME drives just want to avoid detection by UEFI BIOS  , so it may not be motherboard's related.


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## jlewis02 (Jan 2, 2021)

I had to enable CSM to see the drives in the bios.


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## Mussels (Jan 2, 2021)

I may be wrong, but dont NVME drives only show up once they have a UEFI system installed to them, AKA windows?

CSM let you choose a drive directly, but UEFI you have to choose the OS, yes?


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## mirh (Jan 4, 2021)

BIOS booting lets you choose specific disks (and well, only that) because it cannot really be any more smart about it.
UEFI _also_ supports some kind of firmware-based boot manager, but it too has a hardcoded path in the ESP partition that it will always try to look for (which I reckon it's what it uses when you boot from a just-inserted USB key). If it doesn't find them though it won't populate the boot selection menu.

Nvme as a protocol has nothing to do with UEFI then, if not for the very tentative half-assed explanation I tried to provide above about option ROMs.


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## Miguel2013 (Jan 4, 2021)

boot with a dvd usb or with a bootable windows 10 installation disk and see if it can see your nvme disk and it is ready to install windows 10, I think it will show, you said it doesn't show on windows disk managment but look again it may not been initialized or have any partitions or something so you can't see it right away, also load latest ubuntu from another pen drive and see if the app disks sees it. The NVME u have looks plug and play, check uefi settings again as a last resort but this is beyond what I know.


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## hornirl (Jun 26, 2021)

Not sure whether you're still trying on this, but I'm also looking for solutions to getting a Win 10 bootable NVME drive up on an old mobo, in my case an ASUS H87M-PRO. It seems easier to get the NVME working to just hold data, it's the boot NVME that's the real devil. Try here or this search. If you get it working before me, please let me know... Tx.


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## Mussels (Jun 27, 2021)

hornirl said:


> Not sure whether you're still trying on this, but I'm also looking for solutions to getting a Win 10 bootable NVME drive up on an old mobo, in my case an ASUS H87M-PRO. It seems easier to get the NVME working to just hold data, it's the boot NVME that's the real devil. Try here or this search. If you get it working before me, please let me know... Tx.


My dad has his system booting on my old 4770k on NVME, so its not an age thing.

You know that you need to set the BIOS to UEFI boot, and install windows to a GPT partition? (when you make USB installers, they can copy the existing MBR setup and then wont install or boot - you need the original DVD, or to make a bootable USB from ISO with RUFUS and specify GPT)


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## hornirl (Aug 17, 2021)

Mussels said:


> My dad has his system booting on my old 4770k on NVME, so its not an age thing.
> 
> You know that you need to set the BIOS to UEFI boot, and install windows to a GPT partition? (when you make USB installers, they can copy the existing MBR setup and then wont install or boot - you need the original DVD, or to make a bootable USB from ISO with RUFUS and specify GPT)


Thanks for this, though my thanks a little belated. Turned out the problem wasn't the MOBO itself, rather the BIOS needed modifying to insert code to support a _bootable_ NVME drive (it had no trouble recognizing one for just data post-boot via another type of drive (SSD/HDD)). Solution was here in case others come looking.

If you're lucky you can also find a modded BIOS for your MOBO already available here too, or do the modding/reflashing yourself- I didn't find it that  difficult.


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