- Feb 20, 2017
- 4
- 0
- 510
Like it says on the tin, I have an ASRock Z97X Killer motherboard. I have two M.2 SSD cards, one of which is a Kingston Predator 240GB card with a PCIE adapter, and the other of which is a Samsung SM951 256GB card without an adapter. Long story short, I got the Samsung card after I found out that the Kingston card is not on ASRock's list of compatible M.2 cards.
The problem is, whenever I use the Kingston PCIE adapter with either card, they work just fine, but when I insert one of them into the M.2 slot directly on the motherboard, the PC doesn't even recognize that it exists at all. I can't boot into any of my operating systems with the M.2 slot (The Kingston drive is partitioned to run macOS Sierra and Windows 10, and the Samsung is just straight Windows 10 at the moment. If necessary, I hope to get the Kingston card cloned to the Samsung card.) When I boot into UEFI, then go to the Advanced Tab, then Storage Settings, the M.2_1 slot reads "Not Detected" in the listed drives section. I've never seen it read otherwise.
I'm aware that on this motherboard, the M.2 and SATA Express ports (SATA_4 and SATA_5) share bandwidth, so if one is in use, the other is disabled. The thing is, whenever I use the M.2 slot, it disables SATA Express as expected, but the M.2 slot still goes undetected. Even when I have one card in the PCIE adapter and the other in the M.2 slot, I can boot into the one in the PCIE adapter just fine, but the OS doesn't recognize the other card. Am I missing any crucial steps to make the M.2 slot work? Some switch I haven't toggled properly?
Ultimately, I want to take the PCIE adapter out of the picture so that SLI will work with my two video cards. The way I see it, one of three paths will take me to that goal.
A: I can get the M.2 slot working with the Kingston card.
B: I can clone the Kingston card to the Samsung card and use it in the M.2 slot.
C: I can install macOS Sierra and Windows 10 to separate HDDs and get rid of the SSDs entirely. I would prefer to avoid this last resort option, if possible.
The problem is, whenever I use the Kingston PCIE adapter with either card, they work just fine, but when I insert one of them into the M.2 slot directly on the motherboard, the PC doesn't even recognize that it exists at all. I can't boot into any of my operating systems with the M.2 slot (The Kingston drive is partitioned to run macOS Sierra and Windows 10, and the Samsung is just straight Windows 10 at the moment. If necessary, I hope to get the Kingston card cloned to the Samsung card.) When I boot into UEFI, then go to the Advanced Tab, then Storage Settings, the M.2_1 slot reads "Not Detected" in the listed drives section. I've never seen it read otherwise.
I'm aware that on this motherboard, the M.2 and SATA Express ports (SATA_4 and SATA_5) share bandwidth, so if one is in use, the other is disabled. The thing is, whenever I use the M.2 slot, it disables SATA Express as expected, but the M.2 slot still goes undetected. Even when I have one card in the PCIE adapter and the other in the M.2 slot, I can boot into the one in the PCIE adapter just fine, but the OS doesn't recognize the other card. Am I missing any crucial steps to make the M.2 slot work? Some switch I haven't toggled properly?
Ultimately, I want to take the PCIE adapter out of the picture so that SLI will work with my two video cards. The way I see it, one of three paths will take me to that goal.
A: I can get the M.2 slot working with the Kingston card.
B: I can clone the Kingston card to the Samsung card and use it in the M.2 slot.
C: I can install macOS Sierra and Windows 10 to separate HDDs and get rid of the SSDs entirely. I would prefer to avoid this last resort option, if possible.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram