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XPS 8910, Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe, boot drive
Good morning Dell Community,
I have been lurking here for the past few weeks as I have attempted to make my brand-new 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 NVMe as my new boot drive (from the original Toshiba 1TB HDD that came with my Dell XPS 8910 2.5 years ago). At first, I cloned my drive using Samsung's Data Migration tool, and things seemed to be going well. Then, one day, the computer would not boot and went into Automatic Repair mode. I would estimate this was about 2-3 days after initializing the disk.
In reading many forums, I decided to try to do a clean install of Windows on the M.2 SSD since many recommended that for better optimization. This seemed to work on my Samsung SSD, and things were good for 1 day. Then, when restarting, I again encountered the boot failure and Automatic Repair mode.
At this point, I contacted Samsung since this is a brand new disk drive and I hoped that they could identify, diagnose, and fix the issue. From their reaction, they did not want to talk troubleshooting on the phone, but they provided me with a free shipping label to a repair center since the product was so new. I figured that they would swap out the drive with a more reliable one perhaps? Fast forward to yesterday - they mailed me the same disk drive with two sheets of paper saying that in their diagnostics, they had "updated firmware" and everything looked good!
Last night, I inserted the drive into my M.2 slot, once again clean installed Windows, and things seemed to be going well. I installed a few of the programs onto my computer which I use most frequently, which prompted the computer to ask, will you be rebooting now, or later? I said later, and continued to download about 5 of my most frequent programs, including ProTools. I should note that I also downloaded the Samsung NVMe Driver and Samsung Magician, as most forums say these are helpful and even critical, even though it seems that Windows 10 has solved the absolute necessity of the Samsung NVMe driver. (right?) Earlier on in this process, I switched my Computer BIOS from RAID to AHCI, so I could run the Samsung Magician software to do diagnostics on the drive. I ran a diagnostic test and the Samsung Magician said the drive was "good". Benchmarks looked good, over 3000 read and write. The temperature read 55 degrees Celsius, which according to Samsung Magician said "too high", but I have read that it can safely go to 70 degrees Celsius, so I can't imagine this is the problem. The firmware says "latest version" according to Samsung Magician, but to be fair it said this before they did "repair" and "updated the firmware" (I'm not convinced they did much of anything for their repair).
Computer Specs:
i7-6700 CPU @3.40GHz
32 GB RAM (1 16GB original and 2 8GB sticks from Crucial)
Samsung EVO Plus 970 1 TB M.2 NVMe
BIOS is 1.1.10 (the latest version is 1.1.11, I did not want to risk it currently unless it was a necessary upgrade, which I don't think it would be?)
I thank you all for your comments in advance, thanks for helping me troubleshoot this particularly frustrating issue!
Sincerely,
Joel
Techgee
590 Posts
1
July 2nd, 2020 12:00
Getting to Windows Automatic Repair indicates BIOS/UEFI passed Post successfully (and has assessed HW is ok to proceed) and handed off to Windows. Windows then detects something is wrong (probably with a Windows driver - in other words, a software problem, although could be corrupted data on disk).
Are there any SMART errors for the NVMe SSD? Especially "Media and Data Integrity Errors".
Most likely culprit is the NVMe driver. Meaning some incompatibility. I'd leave it on Microsoft's, since it seems in every case the problems start occurring after installing Samsung's NVMe driver.
If your system boots fine and seems ok without adding back last software set you installed (that Automatic Repair removed), I'd install one (or a limited sub-set) program at a time, verify it's stable, then do another, etc. If one of the programs is causing the issue, this would help narrow it down.
Vic384
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3.2K Posts
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July 2nd, 2020 08:00
"Earlier on in this process, I switched my Computer BIOS from RAID to AHCI, so I could run the Samsung Magician software to do diagnostics on the drive." How early in this process, before or after the 'repaired' SSD.
I don't see anything that I could say definitely caused the problem with the boot failure and triggering automatic repair. It is possible that installing the NVMe driver helped; the driver cannot be installed with SATA operation set to RAID.
If your 55 degrees C is with the system at idle, I would try to provide more cooling. The location of the M.2 slot is poor from an airflow standpoint. I think adding a lower front case fan would help.
Techgee
590 Posts
1
July 2nd, 2020 08:00
Are you getting a Blue Screen (BSOD) before Automatic Repair? If so, what's the Stop Code and any .sys file displayed (if present, shows up after "What failed:")?
What happens after Automatic Repair - does it "fix it" and booting continues, does it hang and you do a forced restart which then successfully boots, or does it never boot again?
Jshap24
4 Posts
0
July 2nd, 2020 08:00
Hi TechGee, this latest failure was able to be repaired by Automatic Repair mode. It removed all of the programs I had added last night and was able to boot. I have been using it today and I am afraid to restart... the problems seem to occur when I restart the computer and I have these few hour timeslots of the drive working. I will take a screenshot of HD Sentinel.
Jshap24
4 Posts
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July 2nd, 2020 08:00
I made the change in the BIOS from Raid to AHCI after the first clone but before the first clean install and it remains AHCI after I got the "repaired" SSD yesterday and did the second clean install.
In regards to temperature, it regularly gets over 57 Celsius, and average appears to be around 50. Thanks for the suggestion on the lower fan.
Jshap24
4 Posts
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July 2nd, 2020 09:00
Yes - that is the procedure I followed to change from RAID to AHCI.
Vic384
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July 2nd, 2020 09:00
If after the first clone you changed SATA operation from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS without doing anything else I would be surprised if you got the disk to boot. You actually have to run a procedure like the following to switch Windows 10: http://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-operation/
Vic384
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July 2nd, 2020 13:00
I agree with @Techgee that you should try re-installing the applications the Automatic Repair removed one at a time to determine if a particular application may be corrupting your drive.
I don't think that the NVMe driver is the culprit. The only proof I have is that in the following post the poster had an XPS 8910 with a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO (not Plus) M.2 NVMe SSD and end up installing the NVMe driver and did not report any problems: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8910-new-NVMe-M-2-SSD-clone/td-p/7633570/page/2
Techgee
590 Posts
1
July 2nd, 2020 17:00
My choice of the word "culprit" probably misstates it. What I meant was it seems that the Samsung NVMe driver is present when the problem occurs. It may be that some other program (HD Sentinel, antivirus, etc.) has a problem with the combination of the Samsung NVMe driver and the 970 EVO Plus.
Saltgrass
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4.3K Posts
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July 8th, 2020 07:00
There was a user on the ASUS site that tried using two of those drives on his new ASUS motherboard and both failed to be recognized. I have one ordered and will be testing since I have the same motherboard.
But there may be a problem with the drive. I use the Samsung driver in AHCI controller mode so I can update firmware if necessary. After I test mine, I will get back and report what I find.. You could check and make sure your firmware is up to date, if you haven't already..