Maximus X Formula (Z370) misidentifying m.2 after adding second one

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klepp0906

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So many moons ago I pulled my 1TB m.2 to upgrade to a 2TB. I restored my backup image to the 2TB and life was good. I recently decided to add back the 1TB in the m2.2 slot at the bottom to use as a cache drive.

Upon doing so I could not get the pc to see my main 2TB SSD in the m2.1 slot. Why was it picking up the older smaller drive in the (what i thought was) secondary slot first only? Is the slot that installs at the bottom with the adapter/perpendicular to the board actually the primary? (aka should i be swapping my nvme drives?)

Moving on, I was able to rectify the issue by using a recovery disk to run diskpart and wipe the drive in the m2.2 slot (the old 1tb) and the bios then saw both and allowed me into windows and life was good again.

However now as I look in device manager, it's picking up my primary SSD as "NVMe Samsung SSD 970 SCSI Disk Device" and my secondary as "Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB"

Basically I want to know which nvme slot is actually the primary, and how to rectify the identification proclivity in device manager. my 2TB was identified as "Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB" before adding the 1TB but the 1TB seems to be the gift that keeps on giving which the system wants to defer to even after wiping.
 
There is no primary or secondary, just slot 1 and slot 2, and whichever device initializes first is listed first (which is why device numbering was so unreliable in linux for a long time).

Look in your mb manual. It will have a list of the pcie and m.2 slots and a diagram showing their physical location and their capabilities (which often is accompanied by a chart if it depends on what slots are occupied). If you are confused by what it says, I'll see if I can explain later.
 
I’ve been through the manual. What’s listed as 2.1 (assuming the .1 would indicate first to be initialized) can be set as auto or pcie or sata. 2.2 can be set as x2 or x4 but with x4 you use some Sata slots I don’t use anyways.

another user with the same issue swapped his ssds and they swapped the incorrect identification. He then surmised it was just how the slots labeled them. Of course this is not the case considering my 1st one was labeled properly until the new addition. he also said that the windows installer sees/considers the second .2 slot (the one that requires an adapter bracket to install) as primary based on the fact windows saw that as disk 0/preferred.

later on the same individual formatted his pc at which point both were identified properly from within windows so in the end it’s fixed for him.

for me formatting windows is not an option and I’d like to fix it as well as understand the why. In my digging I also came across the fact that one slot is generally better due to being ran off the cpu as opposed to the pch. No idea if that carries weight or not and if so, which is which. Much less if it has any hand in what happened with the misidentification.
 
The number of the slot doesn't matter, where the drive is doesn't matter, which ever drive initializes first will be listed first. If you put a drive that takes a long time to initialize in the m2.2 and a fast drive in m2.1, the drive in m2.1 will almost always be listed first. The only exception would be if the drive controller (or bus controller) is separate between the two slots, and one of them takes a long time to initialize. In that case, the one on the faster bus would initialize first (unless it's a really slow drive).

It's like if you have two racers, one in lane 1 and one in lane 2. They both start at the same time (or not), but they aren't declared first or second until they finish the race.
 
That makes enough sense. perhaps it’s down to position on the board, if the lanes are pch or cpu shared or one of each, or just one drive being faster (even though it would be the other drive aa it’s same model but larger which generally means a bit faster)

either way i can get past that. What I’d like to fix is why it’s pegging my main drive as scsi after adding the 2nd and how to fix it.
 
If it's using the sata controller in any way, that's probably the reason. Lots of sata controllers advertise as scsi devices.
 
it should not be. the top one only will if its a sata m.2 and im using a 970 evo plus. I do have it set to auto and can flip it/try to force it to pcie real quick to test but not gonna hold my breath. The bottom one m2.2 has no sata option and is pcie only either x2 or x4 if you disable sata ports 5 & 6 which is the option i went with as I have no sata devices connected.
 
It might just be a scsi type nvme drive, seems like it's common. Dunno why it changed the way it was named in the uefi.
 
I've had issues with some boards doing this.. I just put NVME on top slot and M.2 SSD on bottom slot.
 
thing is, theyre both the same SSD. Both M.2 NVME. Both Samsung. Both 970 Evo Plus. The only difference is the size. One is a 1TB. One is a 2TB. The 2TB was called what the 1 is currently, but windows decided to windows me.
 
Lol so i tried to uninstall my boot drive from device manager and restart hoping it would name it properly upon rediscovery. no bueno. So i did it to the other drive in hopes it would see that one missing and put them both back proper or something.

well it put em both back alrright.. now theyre both named NVMe Samsung SSD 970 SCSI Disk Device instead of Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB/2TB lol.
 
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klepp0906 said:
Lol so i tried to uninstall my boot drive from device manager and restart hoping it would name it properly upon rediscovery. no bueno. So i did it to the other drive in hopes it would see that one missing and put them both back proper or something.

well it put em both back alrright.. now theyre both named NVMe Samsung SSD 970 SCSI Disk Device instead of Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB/2TB lol.
Click to expand...
Might be a new naming scheme in the driver or firmware if it automatically updated it. Windows writes to the registry just once when the device is first installed, so that's probably why.

Edit, specially if it used a generic driver when it was first installed
 
Nobu said:
Might be a new naming scheme in the driver or firmware if it automatically updated it. Windows writes to the registry just once when the device is first installed, so that's probably why.

Edit, specially if it used a generic driver when it was first installed
Click to expand...
From what I've read the generic driver is best. Often people have had weird problems when using specific drivers for the nvme drives.
 
Nobu said:
Might be a new naming scheme in the driver or firmware if it automatically updated it. Windows writes to the registry just once when the device is first installed, so that's probably why.

Edit, specially if it used a generic driver when it was first installed
Click to expand...
hmm. thats not an unreasonable assertion. I guess i'm stuck living with it unless I want to go into the registry and search out the friendly name string etc. dont think its worth the trouble I guess. we'll see what happens when i upgrade to windows 11, which will happen when microsoft allows you to move the taskbar to other monitors again :p
 
Furious_Styles said:
From what I've read the generic driver is best. Often people have had weird problems when using specific drivers for the nvme drives.
Click to expand...
well i swapped to the microsoft driver on the samsung nvme controllers but it didnt fix the name unfortunately. as far as performance goes, ive seen people argue both ways. secondary to the naming for me, as funny as that seems. OCD is a bitch :p
 
klepp0906 said:
well i swapped to the microsoft driver on the samsung nvme controllers but it didnt fix the name unfortunately. as far as performance goes, ive seen people argue both ways. secondary to the naming for me, as funny as that seems. OCD is a bitch :p
Click to expand...
Don't fret over the naming. That happens based on the controller. I have some SSDs that showed up as SCSI before in dev manager but it did not affect performance.
 
yea i did check them in diskmark just to be sure. right as rain. I'm quite proud of myself as i've moved on in this case now that they at least match in name, properly identified or not :p
 
Did you ever wipe the original drive? I'm guessing the Windows Boot Manager was still intact on your first drive before you wiped it which is now why you can see it after the wipe.
 
nope, i didnt. I just pulled it and put it in the box. pulled it back out and stuck it in the m2.2 and yea, this whole thing was the result. 2 boot managers and for whatever reason windows wanted to defer to the one on the 2nd m.2 slot, that was the older and smaller drive. its certainly done crazier things :p
 
klepp0906 said:
nope, i didnt. I just pulled it and put it in the box. pulled it back out and stuck it in the m2.2 and yea, this whole thing was the result. 2 boot managers and for whatever reason windows wanted to defer to the one on the 2nd m.2 slot, that was the older and smaller drive. its certainly done crazier things :p
Click to expand...

Yeah, windows is crazy like that. I remember how you used to just tell the bios which drive to boot from rather than screw around with the boot managers. My first dual boot linux machine screwed me up when I removed the drive with the linux install. I had to re-write the boot manager. I suppose it speeds up boot times.
 
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