Hey folks, I'm in a bit of a pickle with my PC setup. I built this rig about five months ago and had been using an old SSD with Windows reset on it. Everything was going smoothly until I decided to add a 1TB NVMe SSD, which worked great at first. However, after being away for three weeks, I came back to find that the SSD had just vanished! It's completely missing from anywhere I can check—no sign of it in Device Manager, Disk Management, or even the BIOS. I've done the usual troubleshooting: updating drivers, reseating the drive, but no change. The drive looks fine visually, so I'm stuck here wondering what to do next. Here's my setup: Motherboard: B760M GAMING PLUS WIFI, CPU: Intel Core i5-14600KF, and the problematic storage is a Kingston SSD NV3 1TB. Any advice would really help! Thanks for reading this long post! Also, big thanks to ChatGPT for translating my thoughts to clear English!
7 Answers
If you have a way to test it on another machine, that’s a solid move. Alternatively, getting a USB holder for the SSD might help too!
The SSD might have shaken loose during transport, which is common. If you haven’t tried it yet, definitely plug it into a different PCIe slot!
Just a heads up—I've seen Windows 11 updates cause some drives to disappear. Have you tried rebooting or power cycling the system? Sometimes that does the trick!
True, but I doubt it would remove it from BIOS. Maybe check if your BIOS settings flipped from UEFI to CSM. That caused some headaches for me.
I had a similar issue before, and a hard power reset worked for me—just turn off your PSU and unplug it for about 30 seconds. Cleaning the pins with isopropyl alcohol can also sometimes work wonders!
Sounds like a rough situation! There are a few possibilities here: 1) The SSD might be loose, 2) Try a different M.2 slot, or 3) Check it out in another machine if you have access to one. Sometimes overheating can also be a cause.
If you've been shifting around your PCIe cards, keep an eye out! Some slots may share lanes with M.2 ports. I had to rearrange my setup once because of this. Check if that might be the case.
If it’s not showing up anywhere, it’s likely the issue lies with either the motherboard’s slot or the SSD itself. I’ve seen this happen with other SSD brands. You can try connecting it to a friend's PC to check if it's still readable. If after trying different slots it still doesn't appear, it's worth checking your warranty because it might be a dead drive. Data recovery is tricky at this point but possible with specialized tools.
Thanks for the detailed advice! I’ll definitely check it in another PC and see what happens. Fingers crossed the warranty will save me!
I did remove and reconnect it already, so I hope it’s not that. I’ll try a different slot when I get home, though!