m.2 drive not recognized

[IgorW]

I have an 17-bs051od (product id IKV33UA#ABA). It has an m.2 slot on the board but after installing a spare m.2 drive I had I get a POST error and then windows will not recognize the drive after booting with the existing pre-installed drive as the primary. I also tried a fresh Windows 10 install where I could see the drive in the list of options but would get an error when selecting that m.2 drive. The drive I am trying to use is a HYNIX SC311 (came from a Dell). 

Does this board not support m.2 drives or is the board not compatible with this specific drive?

I have already updated the BIOS to the latest version. I also tried running the drive diagnostics which passed on both drives (from the BIOS startup).

Any advise is appreciated.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Chapter 1 of the service manual indicates that M.2 SATA drives are supported, so in theory, that drive should have worked.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05963248

Try using the M.2 drive without the 2.5" drive connected and see if it works.

If it does, then the most likely reason is that you have Windows installed on the 2.5" drive and the PC will always want to boot from that drive first if there is an OS on it.

[IgorW]

Thank you for the suggestion. I tried the drive by itself in the m.2 slot. I then tried the m.2 drive in a case that converts the interface to a sata connection. Both of these had the same affect. I will have to try this drive in a different machine next just to see if the drive itself is at fault.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

[IgorW · Accepted solution]

The issue was that the m.2 drive was ata encrypted. The BIOS in the HP laptop does not support that and that resulted in unexpected errors. Once the encryption was removed on the m.2 drive using another laptop the m.2 drive worked just fine in the HP laptop. Problem solved.