Weird dual m.2 SSD issue

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German Muscle

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Ive ran into an issue on this new build. Here are the specs before the story.

Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 7 Pro Bios version F3j
Intel Core i7 9800x
GSkill Tridentz RGB 3200MHz 32GB
dual Intel 760p 512GB NVMe SSDs

I stood this up on the box and installed windows before doing the build in the case. Bought the m.2 drives with the intent to raid0 boot them but after researching it not working i found out only 1 m.2 goes to CPU and the other two m.2 slots on the board go to the PCH and it will not raid over multiple chipsets. Ok no big deal. I knew this could happen and im cool with it. Ill use one as a boot drive and the other for games and life goes on. So i went ahead and installed windows. During windows setup it saw one drive with capacity of 512GB. So i create a partition and format and go on with it. I figure once i get windows setup with all drivers it will see the other one and we can go from there.

Built the system in the case and boot it up and start updating windows and installing drivers. At the end of this the other drive is nowhere to be found. So i figured id pull one out and reinstall(if needed). Since the drive in the CPU slots heatsink is warm i figure thats the one that its using. However if i take any of the drives out it wont boot windows. I tried switching the single drive to different slots then put the one i took out in and try it and then switching slots with same results. I tried installing windows with just one installed in the CPU m.2 slot and it doesnt detect a drive at all. So i go load the F6 drivers on the disk screen of windows installation. It gets the driver but still shows no drive. I put both drives back in and in the same slots they were and windows boots fine. My C drive is only 512GB and i ran crystaldiskmark and its def not raid0. I also have a raid controller in device manager i cannot find a driver for.

I would really like to sort this out before i go much further with the system and installing software and setting it up in case i need to wipe and reinstall. Any ideas?
 
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For a [H]ard user like you to ask for help, the issue is not simple.
By now you probably realized that a reinstall is almost mandatory, but let's keep our hopes high.

1-Does your BIOS sees both SSDs?
2-If no, be ready to mod your BIOS.
3-If yes, prepare a USB boot pendrive with injected NVME drivers from intel. Guide here
4-If the pendrive can see both SSDs, it means there is a chance to repair windows install, but most likely you will choose a brand new install and recover your personal files from backup.
 
geok1ng said:
For a [H]ard user like you to ask for help, the issue is not simple.
By now you probably realized that a reinstall is almost mandatory, but let's keep our hopes high.

1-Does your BIOS sees both SSDs?
2-If no, be ready to mod your BIOS.
3-If yes, prepare a USB boot pendrive with injected NVME drivers from intel. Guide here
4-If the pendrive can see both SSDs, it means there is a chance to repair windows install, but most likely you will choose a brand new install and recover your personal files from backup.
Click to expand...

1- No It only seems to see one of them at a time.
2-Reading up on it now
 
My friends gigabyte x470 board has one nvme 2280 slot that could read Sata m.2 or pci-e x4, and one that could only read pci-e x4

Took us a few minutes to figure that one out. We had one of each type of drive but were stumbling on why one only worked in one slot.
 
Here is a diagram because it makes it easier.

upload_2019-2-19_11-38-41.png


My GPU is in PCIEx16_1
I have 4 sticks of RAM
I have a sound card in PCIEx4_2
As you can see M2P_32G and M2Q_32G go tot he PCH
M2M_32G goes directly to CPU.

You cannot RAID the m.2 with VROC. You would have to have 1 drive in M2M_32G and a add in card in PCIEX16_2 in order to VROC RAID.
Putting a drive into M2Q_32GB will disable SATA ports 4, 5, 6 and 7.

My m.2 drives are in M2M_32G and M2P_32G because i do not want to sacrifice any SATA ports.

Since RAID0 isnt possible what i want to do is have a bootable m.2 drive in M2M_32G and the drive in M2P_32G be a non bootable secondary drive for games.

Its almost like it put the stuff needed to detect boot on one then stored the actual C drive on another since they depend on each others presence to work correctly.
 
I would install with just one SSD on the motherboard (the one below the GPU slot) and do a clean windows install on that one and add any other drives after that, from the sounds of it, windows seems to have put something one the 2nd drive that prevents you from booting with that drive not in your system.
 
Denpepe said:
I would install with just one SSD on the motherboard (the one below the GPU slot) and do a clean windows install on that one and add any other drives after that, from the sounds of it, windows seems to have put something one the 2nd drive that prevents you from booting with that drive not in your system.
Click to expand...
If i remove the drive from M2P_32G and boot into windows setup it doesnt see the drive in the drive list.

Also it only shows one drive in the BIOS but there is only 2 places to look as far as i know. One is boot drives and the other is in VROC. Below are the screenshots

IMG_20190218_194731.jpg IMG_20190218_194824.jpg
 
under peripherals you should have an sata and RST config option have a look there if it is set to AHCI or something else.
 
from Intel's pdf, i assume that a properly installed boot drive should appear as UEFI ...OS Boot Loader
 
Moved the M.2 SSD from the top slot to the bottom slot. Still no second SSD showing up in Bios. System boots just fine though. I also tried disabling XMP as someone on reddit said they have a case open with gigabyte where enabling XMP shuts off a m.2 slot but its not X299 and XMP doesnt make a difference for me.
 
Here is what Gigabyte said. I guess ill close this thread since nobody responds.

upload_2019-2-22_10-5-22.png
 
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