Achingly slow HDD

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, that is the spot.

Unfortunately, I don't have any tips for cloning the OS to the SSD because I always clean install the OS and reinstall my programs and files on the new drive.

If you buy a Samsung drive such as the Samsung 980 PCie 3.0 NVMe SSD,  you can use the free cloning software that Samsung provides.

Samsung Magician & SSD Tools & Software Update | Samsung Semiconductor Global

[herbal_t]

So... bought an "NVMe 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe GEN3.0x4 Internal SSD" and installed it to find that it only appears as a drive in about 50% of bootups - the other half of the time it simply didn't exist as far as the software goes. Reboot and there it is again. Clearly sub-optimal, especially as this drive was intended to be hosting the OS. In your opinion, does this behaviour indicate a faulty unit or could some software setting be the cause?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Unfortunately, I don't know why that would be happening.

I do not believe that it is a software issue though.

If you haven't tried installing an operating system on it yet, did you initialize the drive in the Windows disk management utility?

Initialize new disks | Microsoft Learn

[herbal_t]

• Yes, drive was initialised with Disk Mgmt. Also cloned my C: drive onto it (although it has since been reformatted).
• Gonna just return it. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Your notebook does have a Ryzen processor, correct?

A NVMe SSD should be working in a notebook with a Ryzen processor.

[herbal_t]

Yep, Ryzen 3

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Yes, then any brand/model M.2 NVMe SSD should have worked.

[herbal_t]

Anyway, Paul, thank you so much for your invaluable help. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Before you return the drive, if you haven't removed it yet, you may want to try clean installing Windows by making a bootable USB W10 installation flash drive with the media creation tool from the link below and see if the drive works right with a clean install of Windows.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

Just make sure you install Windows on the new drive and not the 2.5" one.

You may even want to temporarily disconnect the 2.5" drive and see if the PC works fine with just the clean install of Windows on the NVMe SSD.

[herbal_t]

Hi Paul, me again.

So I got the m.2 drive replaced and guess what? Yeah, it's behaving just like the last one did (sometimes it's "there", sometimes it's "gone").

Anyway, my hardware diagnostics software (pre-boot, f2) states that it's out of date so I tried to update it. Unfortunately that didn't work either as can be seen below (this happened regardless of whether I chose to install on the HDD or a USB device).

Re the bootable USB: Do you recommend Windows 10 over 11?