NVME not recognized by windows help

I bought a used nvme m2 model MZNLN128C, https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-MZ-NLN128C-128GB-SOLID-MZNLN128HAHQ-000H1/dp/B07T2FJM1B, inserted it and booted up, it's not shown or detected even in disk management. I have not gone into the bios to see if it's there yet though. Any ideas? Picture attached.


The primary boot nvme this came with is a Phison PS5013 PM8256GPTCB4B8TF
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-PS5013-PM8256GPTCB4B8TF-SSD-Benchmarks.496384.0.html

Edit: not recognized in BIOS either. Bios only has nvme connection. This was described as an m2 nvme msata. It has 2 notches on the card as per the picture so I'm not sure if it's not compatible with my board? Looks like the phison only has the one notch in the card.

 

Two notches is indicative of a SATA drive. Your M.2 slot may not be compatible.

 

That's my assessment at this point. Although when I search for an m2 2280 for sale there are many that have both notches and some with just the one notch, so confusing. I assumed that if it fits in the slot it is usable but I guess not. This being an off brand I can't see any bios update for it so guess i'm SOL. Sending it back.

 

M.2 NVMe drives only has 1 notch while SATA M.2 drives has 2 notches. This is why you cant plug in a M.2 SATA drive into a M.2 NVMe port because of the notch.

At that price you could of got a brand new 512GB NVMe drive with full warranty. Never go with used drives its not worth the risk imo.

 

That's not what I paid for it btw that was just an example link. I paid $12 for it total.It fits fine into the slot.

I re-seated it and still nothing. Now I really have no idea what would be compatible since there's scant info on the details and like I said many nvme's with the same names have both notches or just one notch. My guess is just the exact same one or it also comes up with a crucial with the same pn 5013.

 

Most likely your laptop's motherboard only accept NVMe SSDs if your drive dont show up in the BIOS which is not a surprise as most computers today only accept NVMe SSDs. Anyone that tries to sell M.2 SSDs with 2 notches is clearly trying to scam people by using false advertising by listing it as NVMe when its clearly SATA.

 

First off you're not likely to get an NVME / PCIE based drive for $12

2nd 2 notches = SATA

If your mashing doesn't support M.2 SATA it's time to get an enclosure for it and use it as a portable drive.

Also, look up the PN on google and it will give you the specs / uses from Samsung.

 

Just need to drop it in the mail tomorrow for a return full refund, he didn't dispute it at all so I'm guessing it was either trying to slip one by or most likely the confusion about all this. 128gb totally fine for my needs.

And no all you need is to look for it in the auctions you can find them at 128gb for less than $20 bucks, just searching through right now found a brand new 256gb hynix m2 pcie nvme for $25 free ship. Never say never in this case.

 

I would be skeptical and want verification of the drive. 1TB goes for 100-130 depending on the manufacturer. A viable NVME not SATA should be on average at least $50.

Here's a 128GB though for ~$30 https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-TS128GMTE110S-128GB-Solid-State/dp/B07CXC32T2 I would feel comfortable with this due to the # of ratings / reviews to make an educated decision on whether to buy or not. The $50 mark would weed out the junk drives with no DRAM / bad NAND / poor controllers.

 

it's a sk hynix pc601 pci gen 3 with the single notch. There's always people looking to dump stuff in flash sales just have to get lucky.

 

If you have more than one M.2 slot, try putting it in the other one. It is fairly common for at least one M.2 slot to be a PCH slot with SATA support. Even if you are going to return it, knowing that the other slot supports SATA could be useful knowledge if you plan to later buy something like a 1TB M.2 SATA drive for storage. It also generally makes no difference which M.2 slot you use for the OS boot drive. Both should be bootable and usable for OS installation.

 

Will it mess up my system though? The other slot has the boot drive and I'm not too keen on messing with that.

 

No, not at all. You can move the current boot drive to the other slot and leave it there. I have done this literally hundreds of times. On my desktops I even use PCIe add-in cards with different NVMe SSDs with different OSes on them that I take in and swap the out between multiple systems. I generally install my crash test dummy OSes (latest and not so greatest OSes, like Windows 11,) that I view as expendable trash in this manner.

It's not uncommon on the first boot of Windows for the OS to make a change in the background and tell you that you need to reboot. Much like moving a mouse to a different USB port Windows will sometimes go through a brief driver reinstallation process. Windows will automatically install the NVMe (or SATA) driver for the slot that used to be empty.

I have also moved M.2 drives between slots on my laptops, and moved them to new laptops. It also generally makes no difference which M.2 slot you use for the OS boot drive. Both should be bootable and usable for OS installation. The only limitation is whether or not the slot supports SATA.

 

Hm might try it. The bios says nvme specifically though. Any way to find out what it supports, outside of the included phison above, besides trial and error? It's strange that this one is the long size, the msata's I have used from my old m6700 were half size. Big problem with this "gateway" off brand is that I really don't have much detailed info on it, there's no tech manual or never been bios etc updates probably never will be. It's just a walmart holiday deal that's kinda been abandoned. At least evoo has a functional website.

 

I have never come across a limitation in hardware "support" other than M.2 NVMe-only versus M.2 NVMe/SATA compatible. The latter supports either/or, whereas the former only supports NVMe because it uses CPU lanes (versus PCH lanes). Legacy SATA ports generally run off of the PCH as well.

Brand and SSD controller model number has never been something I have encountered an issue with, and your Gateway branded Tongfang whitebox unit should not be remarkably different than the same machines with different branding on the outside.

I have seen limitations with off-brand NVMe drives that have SSD controllers that cannot be used for Windows 7 and Windows 8.X because there is no available driver support. That causes the drive to not be recognized by Windows, but it is still recognized by the BIOS.

 

Agreed. In my experience they have a lot of unlocked stuff more than the major brands. It would be kind of strange that slots have different compatibilities though, they're right next to each other. NBC article says m2 2280 ssd support whatever that means exactly. I'm guessing the similar items they compared would be compatible too. 970, pm981, 660p, bc511

 

2280 is the size of the PCB. 22mm wide and 80mm long. There are shorter lengths and there is a 22110 form factor (110mm long) that is generally not used except in server applications. I have a couple of Samsung 22110 NVMe enterprise drives. They are generally slower and do not allow enabling things that contribute corruption and data loss, such as write cache features. Although they are somewhat slower (but still very fast) than normal NVMe, they are far more reliable because of their intended application. If you use NVMe RAID0 they are less susceptible to drive membership corruption. They also often have large SMDs that lend to extreme duty and reliability. Most laptops do not support 22110 simply because there is no way to mount the NVMe because the screw standoff is in the wrong place and there is no place for the standoff nut to be relocated.

If a slot is identified as "m2 2280 ssd" with no mention of NVMe, that may be an indication that it is a dual-purpose slot (NVMe/SATA). It could also be an indication of lack of attention to detail in the written documentation. I have seen a few random examples of laptops (usually older very low budget models) that have an M.2 slot that DOES NOT support NVMe. The OEM/ODM used the M.2 form factor to save space inside of the chassis, but the slot is SATA-only and there is no NVMe slot available. This can be due to the CPU being a low cost model that does not have enough PCIe lanes to support NVMe. The AMD AM4 current generation Athlon CPUs are an example of where you might see lack of NVMe support due to CPU being a very cheap product designed for low-performance applications (e.g. Athlon 3000G).

Edit: This photo from one of my desktops is an example of an enterprise 22110 NVMe SSD. Note how huge all of the SMDs are. If you have a system that can use them, they are usually available on eBay for less than half the cost of a normal NVMe drive. The two I have are 1TB and I think I gave like $60 each for them several years ago. They are a very good value when you can find them used, (super expensive purchased new,) and sometimes available in bulk quantities, but they usually won't fit in a laptop or on a gamer-centric desktop mobo with decorative heat sinks that are designed to look fancy and hide the NVMe drives because the SMDs are too large and the heat sink won't fit.

 

Suspected that sloppiness because it is NBC and they skew a lot for the name brands etc Yeah guess it just didn't snap for me that 2280 was a size spec. At least it didn't cost me anything to try this, keep looking I guess.

 

Informative explanation, I learned alot from this. Thank you.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

 

Did the M.2 SATA work in the other port? Did you have a chance to try it?

Certainly. You're welcome. I am glad you found it useful.

 

Nah didn't get to it, thing's gone. I just need to move a couple games off here onto my 2.5 drives and I'm good for a while. If something comes up that's a deal I'll grab it.

 

Was just wondering if this hwi info on the mobo gives what is compatible? Since I don't have any tech info on the mobo I'm trying to determine what would be compatible via other means.

 

I am not sure it would be reliable. Software sometimes shows things that the CPU and chipset support even when there are no devices present and no way to access those features.

 

I've had a real bugger of a time with some nvme drives.
Don't give up on it yet.
Make sure it's initialized, and has a format that can be seen and if it has no partition data on it that alone can make it invisible.
See if it shows in bios, check drive management, check in DOS....Disc Druid (*nix) is my go to for a truly stubborn drive.

 

yeah talk about annoying oh well just search for pcie nvme m2's only with the single notch from now on. Stupid that there's not a third party app that can just detect all that in easily readable for non experts format.

 

If there was expansion room for 7 devices as shown in your output I would think you had a traditional PC.



Knowing what's physically in mine I can only think of 2xNVME / 1 2.5" SATA / WIFI?

NVME usually weeds out the dual slot SATA drives or look for the M key and not B+M.

https://www.delock.de/infothek/M.2/M.2_e.html

 

I have a small external USB enclosure for nvme drives.
It was pretty cheap from ScAmazon and works well enough.
It would be a perfect thing for the OP to have so he could more easily diagnose any issues with the drive.
Something like this...
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Type...external+nvme+enclosure&qid=1633814006&sr=8-4

 

Those do work nice. I use a similar enclosure for both NVMe and M.2 SATA SSDs. They are very handy and better than using a normal flash memory thumb drive.

SSK Aluminum M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure Adapter, USB 3.1/3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) - $18.99
SSK Aluminum USB 3.1 to M.2 NGFF SSD Enclosure Adapter, External M.2 SATA - $12.99

They look identical so I had to mark them in order to tell which was NVMe or SATA before plugging them in.

 

@ N2ishun @ Mr. Fox

I've tested a bunch of these for performance and they all seem to have different issues. The SSK ones didn't really perform all that well in my testing. I didn't test N2's posted one but, based on the RTL9210 would be comparable to the Plugable I went with. The KMS/VL chipsets didn't perform well when I was testing which lead to the RTL testing / acceptance.

Some of the enclosures were easy to swap drives w/o tools and some weren't. I went plugable though based on some reviews and the chipset being different from what I had tested prior. It's a nice case that also works well as a heat sink to keep it cool. It also does have good throughput over USB



Also, make sure to get a good USB-C cable if you want top performance. The plugable shined with provided cables and the premium Nektech. The SSK / UGREEN never really got up to speeds where they should have been.

If all you're doing is testing and not really using it as a portable drive then the cheap $20 enclosures work just fine but, if you want some performance make sure you get something based on the RTL9210.

I have a Sabrent 5GE USBC network adapter and it works great so, I don't have a doubt that their enclosure will perform unless it's a lemon out of the box. Skimming over some of the reviews though I'd still stick with the plugable even though it's ~2x as much. Sabrent though would be a close 2nd. I haven't been looking at 9210 based enclosures for awhile since I have one but, you should get 2X the speed from one vs the other chipsets.

 

That's all good info, thanks for sharing it. For what I use them for these are perfectly adequate and very affordable. Speed was secondary to price for me, as I literally use them for nothing more than storing Macrium Reflect backup images of my OSes roughly once every 30 days. It generally takes 2 to 5 minutes to complete the Macrium image (varies with the amount of bloat in the OS) and I am pleased with them. If I used them on a daily basis to frequently transfer files, the higher speed on the more expensive options would be something I would want.

 

Understandable.

For something that's not "extended" use where the controllers heat up and slow down everything it's imperceptible. If you're doing a lot of / frequent transfers though it would be a better idea to upgrade the enclosure.

For my testing i was backing up 100's of GB's of data to see where / if they overheated / slowed down. Of course dual internal drives go much faster than the enclosure @ 1-1.5GB/s so the duration is shorter besides the internal fans cooled them off better than passive cooling of the AL enclosure.

Now, there's newer options that push 20gbps that aren't outrageously priced like the TB3 models and with USB4 coming down the pipe there should be more options / priced lower. using the ASM2364

 

Yeah I have a similar deal for my old half size msata out of my old M6700 works great, 128gb size too. But as mentioned earlier this is already on it's way back in the mail so moot now. May as well fill up the internal slots first. I wouldn't want another external to juggle. I've got several 2.5hdd's with games etc that I use a sata-usb3 cable for. It's not a must have anyways just thought it would be nice to put a couple heavier programs on without having to move around games between the different drives. I'll have to do some auctions on eb to get below 25$ for a 256gb, there a several 128gb nvme pcie m2's for around 20$ BIN but why do that when you can get double if you win lol

Anybody used those short cards in a full sized nvme slot? I see several of those but seems like it would need an adapter to secure it.

Edit: sorry responded to the wrong person, was responding to your quoted response.

 

I've got a box full of them too from 32GB up to 1TB. Nostalgia? When I sell a laptop though I pull my drive and put something different into them that doesn't have data or chance of data to be recovered from it. 2.5's come in handy every once in awhile though for something. Since I bult my NAS though they rarely see the light of day. Might be time to DOD wipe them and sell them off to someone that can use them for something else.

I even pulled a PATA from my car and made a new mSATA SSD / adapter to fill the spot to get quicker response from the NAV / Maps loading/calculating routes.

 

Well I'm laptop only so it's convenient, I can just use them with my backup too, at least for old games. Yeah may as well sell them if you don't use them unless the going price is so low not worth the hassle. The old msata 128gb would probably be less than 10$ not worth selling, nice little drive to swap and store stuff. I don't have a lot of space for physical storage so I don't accumulate what I don't use afa standard consumer stuff, sell not needed stuff that's worth selling asap.

 

I had someone respond to an ad that didn't even have the item listed in hopes of finding one PATA drive but, then balked @ the $100 price when it sells new for $200-$400 because it's a hardened drive for machine use. I think they went with the Amazon version for $30 instead. The value in selling them isn't really there in most cases the costs of commissions / shipping take another 20% off the profit.

*shrug*

I have a Samsung SSD 1TB I refuse to sell because I paid way too much for it when it came out vs what it could fetch today on the market. Still works great as a repository if needed.

 

Sunk costs make today's decisions on those past costs, often, illogical.

Whatever you paid for it back then was the going market rate. Whatever you can get for it today is the same. It's a different story if you have a use for it. But, if you have no use for it and are keeping it 'just because', it's at your loss.

 

@ tilleroftheearth

It wasn't up for debate. It was a statement.

 

I'm not debating. I'm stating facts.

 

Well I can agree with that if you don't have the extra space to store all that. But what he's talking about can still be used if he needed it, like a private junk yard lol. But yeah not a fan of keeping old unused standard consumer stuff around either, seen tons of that in peoples garages/storage units that they are actually paying to keep around instead of just getting what they can out of it and moving on. Ok I can see art/rare books/collectibles etc holding onto may go up in value but in most cases computer stuff nah Still it's work to do ebay, I don't touch scamazon anymore. They take about 14% then either you or the buyer pays ship, I won't do it unless I can get back after all that at least $20.

 

I rarely resell anything I've through using. Donating to a worthy individual/family is enough ROI for me.

 

That can be a major PIA in many cases LOL.

 

???

Helping others is not a PIA. Be grateful for everything you have. Pass it on, when you can. You never know when you may be on the receiving end in the future.

 

Reselling is a costly endeavor on well known sites. EB charges about 20% after all of the fees plus shipping commissions not to mention PayPal fees. CL is free but they don't have much reach and tons of spam to deal with. FB marketplace might be my next venture though. Amazon just seems like a headache.

Gifting might be an option for smaller stuff. With the pandemic going on I'm hesitant on in person handoffs. The forementioned SSD doesn't take up much space and I can still use it on occasion for temp storage or implement it for flash caching.

 

ebay is 14% and if you don't price the shipping in free, or just charge buyer, then that's also on you. Still for reaching the amount of people it's totally worth it. I just use eb managed payments, for selling the site pretty much dumped paypal last year, no way I can see to do it now. Buying you still can use it easily, no point though imo may as well pull out the credit card. CL is a pia but I've had some luck with it even in a small city. Yeah forgot about FakeBook since I loathe to use it. Haven't tried this site.

 

EB owns PP so, it's integrated.

FB has that reach with the option of paying through FB payments and probably take their cut like the others but, you can do a CL style post as well and avoid the fees by managing the payment yourself.

 

Nope, eb sold pp long ago, only when you buy something is it available. Selling doesn't allow you to take pp payments anymore.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57318294

https://www.fintechfutures.com/2021/06/ebay-split-from-paypal-for-paying-sellers-comes-into-effect/

 

I still have my seller account tied to PP for fees. Let's just chalk up EB/PP to "it's complicated"

 

Hm I've heard some sellers still can, I wasn't given a choice even though I'm just a here and there seller. Right after a sale they pretty much gave me no choice to receive my payment so I had to, didn't see an option not to. I'd like to have the option, I don't see any other option than mp's when listing.