Asus Z97i Plus M.2 Help

[dfonda]

So I have been working across the state with my SIL and Daughter...To get an M.2 drive working with the old Asus Z97i Plus Mobo...

When I rebuilt the PC for them last Xmas (New Case, Old parts) I stuck a 500GB SSD in it, thinking that can hold them for a bit. A year later they need more storage. I cleared off a USB 3.0 8TB drive for them and suggested they get 1TB SSD and clone it.

They got an M.2 drive by mistake. I said yeah you have an M.2 slot but it is gonna be a pain to get it working probably....

Suggested they return it and get an SSD for a $100 or I would buy it and fill the 2nd M.2 spot on my Mobo. Or I would try to help them thru text to get it working, and they chose that..(The painful choice of the 3)

anyway almost no documentation in the manual...they were so rare back then. I helped them get it physically installed...

1) Mobo doesn't boot, but the SATA SSD with OS shows in UEFI . M.2 not visible.
2) Had them update BIOS (Needed 2604 or newer for NVME) that worked , can see M.2 in UEFI no longer sees SATA SSD with OS so still does not boot.
They tried the SATA SSD with OS in all the SATA ports , no boot. (I was thinking shared resource with the M.2 which uses SATA bus not PCIe.)

I asked them to check the BOOT order for drives..they don't see the SSD.

Any suggestions? Any one with the Z97i using M.2?

I told them to get the SATA SSD to solve their issue, since the M.2 has no speed advantage on that MOBO...Otherwise bring it home to me at Xmas vacation and I'll look at it. I'll put a Samsung SSD in their stocking at that point.

Any help is appreciated. I told them I would post it up in the Forums since we have so many smart folks here...

 

[dejo]

just guessing, but I think there are shared lanes between the sata and m.2. I would try a different port on a different bank for the sata.
I have used m.2 on the asrock z97 itx board and had no issues at all- but didnt have a sata drive in the mix

 

[dfonda]

just guessing, but I think there are shared lanes between the sata and m.2. I would try a different port on a different bank for the sata.
I have used m.2 on the asrock z97 itx board and had no issues at all- but didnt have a sata drive in the mix

I forgot to add a #3 but that was tried right under 2, and I mentioned the SATA and M.2 shared the SATA bus...

EDIT: Just checked with them to make sure they tried every SATA Port...they had ...but they got it fixed... They had knocked the end of the SATA cable in the SSD loose when they were moving the other end to different ports.

So updating the UEFI was probably the fix.

 

[dejo]

I have moved from sata ssd almost completely. I have an old Dell business class 4610m laptop that is sata only, everything else is m.2 for me now.
Glad they have it working now anyway