I recently picked up an HP OMEN 875-0084 from a thrift store and its M.2 NVMe slot is extremely selective. The system has an i7-9700, 24 GB of DDR4-2666 memory, and an RTX 2070 Super. I updated the BIOS and reseated the CPU, and I confirmed that the original 512 GB Intel 660p drive has failed. A working 128 GB M.2 2230 drive was detected once, but working 2280 drives are not recognized when installed and secured with the screw. The original drive was 512 GB, while another test drive is a 1 TB WD Blue. Has anyone encountered this kind of drive compatibility issue with this model, or is the M.2 slot or controller probably defective?
3 Answers
Use a bootable maintenance environment and check its disk-management utility to see whether the 2280 drive appears outside of Windows. If it is visible there, the issue could be partitioning or an operating-system driver problem. If it is missing there too, compare the drive type, keying, size, and PCIe generation with the original drive; otherwise the slot may have a hardware fault.
It may be worth cleaning the connector carefully with isopropyl alcohol and checking for bent or damaged contacts. Also test the SSD while it is inserted but not fully screwed down, since an incorrectly positioned standoff or mounting point could press the drive down at the wrong angle. If only one particular 2230 drive works, though, a problem with the slot or board is still more likely than a normal compatibility limitation.
After more testing, it seems unusually selective rather than completely dead. The original Samsung drive works, but another Samsung drive is not detected, while a 128 GB SK hynix 2230 drive is recognized immediately. Some drives also fail when mounted in the 2280 position.
The first suspicion would be a failing M.2 slot or storage controller, especially since multiple known-good drives are not detected. Make sure the BIOS is fully updated and that the drives are NVMe rather than M.2 SATA, since those interfaces are not interchangeable. If the slot is damaged, this motherboard may not have a practical expansion-card workaround because its only full-length PCIe slot is already occupied by the graphics card.
The drives that fail are also known to be working, and the behavior changes depending on the brand and physical size. That makes a simple Windows partition issue unlikely, although checking the BIOS and a separate boot environment is still a useful confirmation.