** UPDATE: Issue has been resolved! Please see my post in the replies below for details and possible solutions if you are experiencing similar issues **
PROBLEM: The two Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSDs in my system keep disappearing in Windows and I am unable to access them again until I restart my PC. They do appear in BIOS and Windows on start up, but once I try to access them in any manner, they crash and become unusable. Even attempting a simple Performance Benchmark in Samsung Magician on either drive fails and causes this to happen.
INFO: Windows 10 has always been installed on the 860 EVO SATA SSD (which I’ve never had issues with), since building this entire machine fresh about a year ago. I have only used the NVMe drives
as storage, mostly for game installs. HWiNFO64 shows device health at 99% for both NVMe drives. All device firmware is up-to-date (verified using Samsung Magician). All system drivers and Windows 10 updates are current as well.
This disappearing issue recently started happening after flashing to the latest BIOS version for my motherboard in early November. I also did a clean install of Windows 10 afterwards since v. 20H2 was relatively new.
What's driving me nuts is, this has happened before. I can’t recall exactly what caused it the last time (either a previous BIOS flash or the Windows 10 v. 2004 update in May), but regardless, I was eventually able to fix it and
had been using the NVMe drives normally for months without failures. Unfortunately, I also can’t remember what combination of things I did to fix it last time, as it took a few weeks of trial and error. It's been well over a month
this time around, though, and I'm running out of ideas.
SYSTEM SPECS:
MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte z390 Aorus Master (F11l Bios)
CPU: Intel i7-9700k @ 3.60GHz (with EVGA CLC 240 AIO Cooler)
GPU: EVGA RTX 2080 Super FTW3 Hybrid
PSU: Seasonic FOCUS GX-750 (750W 80+ Gold)
MEMORY: G. Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 32GB RAM (4x8GB @ 3200MHz)
BOOT DRIVE: Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SATA SSD
STORAGE: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB NVMe SSD
STORAGE: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB NVMe SSD
OS: Windows 10 Home Edition, 64-bit, Version 20H2
STEPS TAKEN: (in order)
HARDWARE - Using SATA Port 0 for Boot Drive (no conflicts according to motherboard Manual)
HARDWARE - Reseated the NVMe drives and/or tried different sockets on the motherboard
BIOS - Cleared CMOS and/or Loaded Optimized Defaults (only changing Fan settings and enabling XMP for Memory)
BIOS - ACHI is enabled (never used RAID)
BIOS - Tried CSM both on/off (with UEFI options selected when enabled)
BIOS - Tried Secure Boot on/off (when CSM is disabled)
BIOS/WINDOWS - Tried UEFI/GPT and non-UEFI/MBR for Windows installation on SATA Boot Drive
WINDOWS - Windows 10 installed on SATA Boot Drive (via Microsoft-provided USB)
WINDOWS - Drivers auto updated (via Windows Update)
WINDOWS - Windows auto updated to v. 1909 (via Windows Update)
WINDOWS - Windows updated to v. 20H2 (via Windows Update or Windows Update Assistant)
WINDOWS - Other drivers manually updated using Gigabyte, Intel and Samsung websites (I've also tried skipping this step entirely to avoid user errors)
WINDOWS - Power Management Settings: 'Fast Startup' disabled
WINDOWS - Power Management Settings: 'Turn off hard disk' set to 0 min. and 'PCI Express Link State Power Management' set to Off
WINDOWS - NVMe drives formatted as GPT, Simple Volume and NTFS
WINDOWS - Samsung Magician: Attempt Performance Benchmark, operation fails, NVMe drive(s) disappear from Magician and Windows
EVENT VIEWER ERRORS: (when the NVMe drives disappear)
WARNING – stornvme – Event ID 129: Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort*, was issued.
ERROR – stornvme – Event ID 11: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort*.
ERROR – WHEA-Logger – Event ID 1: A fatal hardware error has occurred. A record describing the condition is contained in the data section of this event.
WARNING – disk – Event ID 51: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk*\DR* during a paging operation.
*1 and/or 2, depending on which drive crashed
I'm also seeing a few NTFS Warnings, such as: 'The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur in VolumeId: D:, DeviceName:
\Device\HarddiskVolume5' (or some other random Volume number). This seems odd to me because I only create a single Simple volume on each NVMe drive via Disk Management whenever I initialize and format them. I also wipe the drives (using DISKPART Clean
and/or Samsung Secure Erase) before reformatting.
Anyways, it's obvious there is some kind of NVMe controller issue or conflict, but what is causing it? Am I doing something wrong? Also, why am I seeing RaidPort errors when nothing is set up in a RAID configuration?
Is that normal, even when ACHI is enabled in BIOS?
I've tried repairing Windows; I've tried reinstalling Windows clean after each version update to minimize errors; I've even tried mounting only one NVMe on the motherboard at a time...but ultimately, nothing seems to
be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!