BIOS not recognising drive

[Rhiannon_B]

Hi, I’m hoping somebody will be able to help me narrow down a problem.

Quite a while ago, my desktop (bought from here in 2022) turned off unexpectedly in the middle of a windows update. It would then only open BIOS when I turned it on and sometimes under Boot Priority it would say “Windows Boot Manager (M.2_1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB) (1000.2GB) and sometimes it was blank. I tried reinstalling windows, but it wouldn’t recognise the drive and on the few occasions it did, it said it can’t write to any of the partitions.

I tried to contact a repair technician and they said they didn’t repair custom gaming PCs unless they built them themselves, so I thought I’d try myself.

My guess is that I need to buy a new M.2 SSD Drive but it looks like a tricky thing to locate and replace. Before I go trying to work out where it is and how to do it, is there anything I should try first? I tried to replace the 1st storage drive (on the off chance) as that looked a lot easier to replace, but unsurprisingly it didn’t do anything to help.

Specs:

Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERBOX TD500 MESH ARGB GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.7GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
12GB AMD RADEON™ RX 6700 XT - HDMI, DP - DX® 12
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 240 Series RGB High Performance Liquid Cooler (AMD)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account

 

[SimonPeters116]

Expansion Slots - Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Manual [Page 20]

Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus Manual Online: Expansion Slots. Unplug the power cord before adding or removing expansion cards. Failure to do so may cause you physical injury and damage motherboard components. 5 Slot No. Slot Description 1 PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16_1 slot 2 PCIe 4.0 x1_1 slot 3 PCIe...

www.manualslib.com

Here's a link to your motherboard manual, lay out pic. First one I found on Google.

NVME drives are fairly easy to change and fairly easy to locate. See that layout page.
Usually there's a cover, which is also a heat sink I think, screwed to your motherboard.
The drives go directly into sockets on your motherboard. They're connected through your mo-bo directly to your CPU, which is why they're so fast. There is a way of removing these drives, easy enough but find out how to do it.
They slot straight into the socket, but some are inserted at an angle, others just slide straight in. Then they're secured by a screw at the tail end. Some boards have a catch built in, instead of using a screw. You'll want to check what style sockets you've got.
Once you know, it's a very easy item to swap. But you need to know first. There will be a page which tells you how in your boards manual.
New drives come with a variety of pads, to suit different boards and drive arrangements. Some boards will stack two drives on top of each other in a double socket. Some boards only use single sockets. There will be pads to suit both arrangements. So see which pads are on the drive you're taking out and use the new ones. Old pads will be compressed, so don't reuse them. They're to transfer heat to the heatsink/cover and anti-vibration, I think. Again, this will probably be in your manual.

Whether or not a new NVME drive will resolve your problem, I don't know.