P650RP6 not detecting NVMe drive

Hello

My P650RP6 is from PC Specialist. The slot is working with M.2 SSDs but not NVMe drives, this is the 2nd one I have tried now, it isn't detected in the BIOS, in disk management and even when I try to reinstall the OS. I can't figure out why it isn't working or how this is even possible. This drive is a replacement for the first one I bought that didn't work because PC Specialist said it appears the drive is faulty. I am becoming increasingly frustrated over this now as I have no other ideas, I think it must be an issue with the laptop now detecting NVMe drives and if that's the case, I dont understand why it would also have an offboard NVMe controller in the BIOS?!?!

Any thoughts would be appreciated, I really want to get this fixed.

 

One slot is NVMe. The other is M.2 only. So you may be putting it in the M.2 only slot.

 

It is the correct slot as it only fits in one of the 2 slots because of the position of the notch. The M.2 SSD fits in both slots but the NVMe only fits in one, the one I have put it in.

 

Have you tried it with just the NVMe and nothing in the other slot?

According to the Clevo website

Also what BIOS version are you on?

It has an 'offboard NVMe controller' because the NVME uses PCI-e 4x so it doesn't go through the standard SATA controller

 

Did you load the driver for the NVMe drive?

 

Most of them won't be listed in the BIOS/EFI at all and show "offboard NVME".

If it's not your OS installation drive, we'll need to know what OS you're running as you should just need to install the NVME driver if it's an older OS (Win7 for example).

 

You can only have the one NVMe drive in the system, and when you do the second M.2 slot needs to be empty. You can have two Sata M.2 drives, one Sata M.2, or one NVMe M.2 for the different configuration options that will work in the system.

Are you trying to put in two NVMe drives, or one NVMe with the Sata in the second slot? Those configurations wouldn't work if that is the case.

 

UPDATE: Resolved! All of your comments collectively helped me sort this out so thanks very much. It was indeed because of the 2 drives being there together. Once I removed the M.2 SATA, the BIOS doesn't show the NVMe as a SATA drive but it does show in the offboard NVMe controller. When I booted the windows installation media, it saw the drive as unallocated space. Thanks for your help, getting this sorted is the best birthday gift


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Firstly thank you all for your responses and sorry for the very long response but it is for clarity.

My current OS drive is an M.2 SSD which I bought with the laptop. OS is Windows 10 Pro.

Looking at the orientation of the drives (looking down on the MOBO), there are the 2 SATA drives, then above that is a horizontal slot capable of taking the M.2 SSD only, and to the right is the vertical slot which will take M.2 SSD or NVMe.

I have a 2tb samsung spinpoint m9t and a samsung 840 SSD mounted in the 2 SATA ports. These stay as they are in both configs I have tried, and are SATA ports 2 and 3 in the BIOS.

The original config involved just the M.2 SSD with the OS shipped by PC Specialist was originally mounted in the vertical slot to the right, registered in the BIOS as SATA port 0, and when the drive is in place it appears just fine.

In my current config I moved the M.2 SSD over to the horizontal mount which is M.2 SSD only (SATA port 1 in the BIOS), and installed the NVMe into the vertical mount port. In this config, the BIOS sees SATA port 1, 2 and 3 have drives in place, but SATA port 0 says "not detected". Similarly nothing in Disk management.

Since reading the posts above, for which I am very grateful, I did remove the M.2 SSD from the 2nd slot but still the NVMe doesn't get seen in the BIOS, it is still "not detected". It then throws an error because it is looking for an OS as my OS drive is removed, but I didn't try to install the OS because it still showed as not detected. Are you saying that it won't appear in the BIOS at all and that it will only be visible when I try to install windows? Also do I need to remove my other SATA drives too?

BIOS version is 1.05.07TPCS (PC specialist's BIOS which they will have shipped in laptops which do have this same NVMe installed).

Also I don't understand how to load the NVMe drivers, as suggested above? I tried to download the NVMe drivers from Samsung's website as I have the SM961, but it basically wouldn't install anything because an NVMe drive wasn't detected (or something along those lines). I didn't play with it much though, I figured it wanted to see a drive in place before it accepted a driver installation, this sounded logical to me.

I also realised that on the PC Specialist configurator, if you tried to put an NVMe in slot 1 and an SSD in slot 2 it throws an error too. I will try a few more things, but any more suggestions you can throw my way would be much appreciated.

 

Samsung does not support the NVME driver officially on the SM961 but you can manually install the driver via device manager like myself.

 

The Samsung PCIe drives will not show up in the BIOS setup in any given configuration, but should otherwise work fine in your OS given the driver is working.

And you should, in fact, be able to run one PCIe drive + one mSATA drive (both being m.2 drives) together. The PCIe drive will sit nearest the battery, and the mSATA one will set between the 2.5" SATA bay and the GPU fans. The mSATA drive should also show up in the BIOS, unlike the PCIe drive.

 

Thanks for the update. Glad you were able to get that resolved. Happy Birthday and enjoy the computer!

 

Oh junk, I totally missed that.

Best wishes, @rav007!