Bad NVMe Drive

[mrlip]

Hi All

I recently received a Nova 15 from PCS with a 1TB PCS NVMe drive however it looks like I may have got a bad drive, which seems a pretty slim chance these days I know but I have done all I can think of with it. Note this drive is to be used as a non-OS drive. I have my OS on a Samsung 970 EVO which is working fine

On receiving the machine (No OS option), I formatted the drive using partition wizard. This failed halfway through to the point where the drive was no longer picked up by PW or in the bios. I reseated it just to check that was ok and it was then picked up again by the bios and PW. I managed to do a quick format with a single NTFS partition which appeared to work ok until I noticed the drive was write protected in Windows. Used disk part to Remove the write protection attribute and used the clean command. Again this caused the drive to disappear on Windows and not show either on explorer or disk management.

As a last attempt I used PW again but as bootable media and managed to reformat the drive. This again appeared to work until I tried to restore data to the drive and it failed halfway through. It seems anytime there is prolonged writing to the drive it dies.

I’ve ran a surface test on the drive and no bad sectors reported. All chipset drivers are up to date from the PCS downloads section. Should I contact PCS to get a replacement drive sent out? Config-

Chassis & Display
Nova Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2000 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 230W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Battery
Nova Series Detachable 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.2 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.2 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language
15" NOVA SERIES UK KEYBOARD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
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[SpyderTracks]

How comfortable do you feel taking the bottom off and reseating the PCS SSD?

This can happen if it's not seated properly and is making a bad contact, can come loose in transport sometimes, it's a good first thing to check before arranging for a replacement.

I would just detach the bottom panel, unscrew the PCS SSD, remove it, then put it back in a screw it down again, that's all you need to do.

If it's still flaky after that, then I'd arrange an RMA with PCS which you can do through the main PCS site. They should be able to ship you a replacement drive by next day courier rather than you having to send the whole laptop back. Then the courier will just collect the bad drive when he delivers the new one.

 

[mrlip]

I’m Fine with it but, I’ve already reseated it 3 or 4 times. Yeah I think I will go down the RMA route for the drive as I’ve tried everything I can think of. 1 thing I haven’t tried is the drive in my old laptop just to make sure there isn’t anything whacky going on with the slot on the Nova. I will check that tomorrow then go from there

 

[SpyderTracks]

I’m Fine with it but, I’ve already reseated it 3 or 4 times. Yeah I think I will go down the RMA route for the drive as I’ve tried everything I can think of. 1 thing I haven’t tried is the drive in my old laptop just to make sure there isn’t anything whacky going on with the slot on the Nova. I will check that tomorrow then go from there

Ah, yes, if you've already tried that then yeah, RMA is gonna be the best route.

All the best

 

[ubuysa]

I’m Fine with it but, I’ve already reseated it 3 or 4 times. Yeah I think I will go down the RMA route for the drive as I’ve tried everything I can think of. 1 thing I haven’t tried is the drive in my old laptop just to make sure there isn’t anything whacky going on with the slot on the Nova. I will check that tomorrow then go from there

Have you tried a dispart clean followed by a diskpart create partition primary and a diskpart format fs=ntfs?

What does chkdsk /f say about the drive?

 

[mrlip]

Have you tried a dispart clean followed by a diskpart create partition primary and a diskpart format fs=ntfs?

What does chkdsk /f say about the drive?

Yeah I had done those 3 diskpart commands and it bombed out halfway through the format.

Interestingly, I have just put the drive in my old laptop and run PW "wipe partition" function and it wiped fine! This wouldn't complete when the drive was in the Nova. So it doesn't seem to be an issue with the drive. I will try to swap the slots around for the Samsung EVO and the PCS drive

 

[Scott]

Slim chance but is there perhaps a configuration element that needs to be done in the BIOS to have 2 high speed NVME slots occupied?

 

[KeepingItRetro]

Kinda related but is the 1TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2000 MB/R, 1100 MB/W) a Nvme drive?

 

[Scott]

Anything over 600MB/s is automatically known to be NVME

 

[mrlip]

Slim chance but is there perhaps a configuration element that needs to be done in the BIOS to have 2 high speed NVME slots occupied?

Hi Scott

I can't see anything in the bios that would be linked to this. I will try to swap the drives around in terms of the slots they are in and report back

 

[mrlip]

Tried swapping the drives around. I can wipe the partition in PW now but anytime I try to copy data to the drive, it fails with

Error 0x800701B1 a device which does not exist was specified

From there I can’t do anything with the drive in Windows, it’s shows in Disk Management but I can’t format it. It requires a shutdown and then I have to reformat it in PW all over again.

I will RMA it

 

[SpyderTracks]

Tried swapping the drives around. I can wipe the partition in PW now but anytime I try to copy data to the drive, it fails with

Error 0x800701B1 a device which does not exist was specified

From there I can’t do anything with the drive in Windows, it’s shows in Disk Management but I can’t format it. It requires a shutdown and then I have to reformat it in PW all over again.

I will RMA it

Yeah, think it's definitely a faulty drive.

 

[mrlip]

I've requested RMA on it. Interestingly, I came across this thread last night from June ( where the OP has the same issue as me and is also paired with a Samsung 970 EVO. I've spoken to the OP and he RMA'd the PCS drive but still had the same issue when he got a new one so has now returned the whole laptop and is waiting on news.

I am going to see if I can swap my PCS m2 drive for the Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD as it seems there is a possible incompability with 2x m2 drives being used at once in the Nova.

 

[ubuysa]

I am going to see if I can swap my PCS m2 drive for the Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD as it seems there is a possible incompability with 2x m2 drives being used at once in the Nova.

I can't put my finger on it now but I'm sure we've come across this M.2 issue on some laptops before?

 

[mrlip]

Hi Ubuysa

Interesting. It does seem like it could be a I\O issue that could be solved in the bios or a driver update etc. But then again, I've checked everywhere in the BIOS and I can't seem anything obvious and in terms of drivers, the Samsung has its own NVMe driver but the PCS one just uses the standard Windows driver I believe so I cant see anything there either. But I am all ears on trying out possible solutions if anyone can think of any.

Thanks for everyones input

 

[Scott]

I think there may be a PCI lane limitation with 2 fast M2 drives. Possibly not of course, but the drive working fine in the other laptop has me thinking this way.

 

[mrlip]

I think there may be a PCI lane limitation with 2 fast M2 drives. Possibly not of course, but the drive working fine in the other laptop has me thinking this way.

It could well be Scott. Perhaps something PCS can speak to Clevo about to see if it can be resolved with a BIOS update if so. My RMA has been approved so I am going to call PCS in the next few mins to see about swapping the replacement for the Samsung 860 QVO.

 

[mrlip]

Just a further update, I've spoken with PCS and I should be able to swap the m.2 drive for the Samsung 860 QVO but I will need to do a standard replacement and send the PCS drive back first rather than advanced replacement. This is fine as there's no urgent rush with it only being a secondary drive