Problem with M.2 SSD in Aspire TC-780

Jonomite

I'm experiencing an SSD problem in an Aspire TC-780 that has really stumped me. Here's the background:

A while ago, I installed an M.2 6GB/s SSD (M and B keyed) in this device. It worked flawlessly for about a year. Then, about 6 months ago, with increasing frequency, each time I cold booted the machine, I would get an error that no boot device was detected. While I was able to get it to boot most of the time when this occurred, it eventually got to the point where the SSD seemed to have failed, and I did a warranty exchange. In the interim, I installed Windows on an old mechanical HD.

Due to all the supply chain issues, it was going to take some time for the new SSD to ship to me. After doing some research on the motherboard in this computer, I discovered that it would accept an NVMe SSD. I went ahead and purchased one, attached it to the motherboard, cloned Windows, did a quick boot sector fix, and was up and running splendidly for several weeks.

Until I did a cold boot (!!) This time, however, instead of getting a no boot device detected error, somehow, it seems that there is now a BIOS password on the SSD! A menu pops up showing that the SSD is "locked" and asks me to enter a password. After several failed attempts at entering a password, the menu says I need to contact Acer customer support with this issue, and spits out an error code (which changes each time this occurs).

It is a complete mystery to me how this BIOS HD password on the SSD was set - there is not even an option to set an HD password in the BIOS for this machine (in contrast, I am able to set a BIOS password to enter the BIOS...).

Does anyone have any ideas what on earth is going on here? Is this a virus? Is this motherboard's M.2 slot on the fritz? I'm so stumped by this.

billsey

OK, first step... The TC-780 motherboard officially supports only SATA drives in the M.2 slot. The slot itself, however, is PCIe 3.0 x2, so there is the possibility that it will work with a NVMe x2 drive. From your experience it does work with NVMe but we don't know if your issue is due to the drive, the interface or the mismatch between spec and reality. It is very possible that they intended to support NVMe x2 but were unable to get it working stably before ship date. The system is either Kaby Lake or Skylake-S based and that was just about the time support for NVMe was getting baked into the chipsets. Do you have a 6th gen (Skylake-S) CPU or 7th gen? If 6th gen the motherboard is going to be much less likely to work stably with NVMe... Next, which BIOS do you have installed? If 6th gen it's likely R01-A1, if 7th gen there are several and you probably want an R02-Bx version.

Is there any chance the donor drive for the cloning process is still available, so you can redo the clone?

Jonomite

Thanks for your response.

It has a Core i5-7400, so it's a 7th gen CPU. I'm running the latest BIOS.

Given that two M.2 SSDs have failed (both SATA and NVMe), I'm determined to chalk this up to the motherboard just not playing 100% nice with this form factor. I went ahead and threw in a 2.5' SSD. Fingers crossed this one lasts.

billsey

Yes, but I'd be worried about if why the M.2 slot failed. In the absence of physical damage that slot is just like any other PCIe slot and if the chipset is allowing one to fail it could easily go on to allowing more to fail, including internal PCIe lanes and eventually every connection between functions on the motherboard. If the system came in to me with those symptoms I'd be looking seriously at a motherboard replacement...

StevenGen

Jonomite said:

I'm experiencing an SSD problem in an Aspire TC-780 that has really stumped me. Here's the background:

A while ago, I installed an M.2 6GB/s SSD (M and B keyed) in this device. It worked flawlessly for about a year. Then, about 6 months ago, with increasing frequency, each time I cold booted the machine, I would get an error that no boot device was detected. While I was able to get it to boot most of the time when this occurred, it eventually got to the point where the SSD seemed to have failed, and I did a warranty exchange. In the interim, I installed Windows on an old mechanical HD.

Due to all the supply chain issues, it was going to take some time for the new SSD to ship to me. After doing some research on the motherboard in this computer, I discovered that it would accept an NVMe SSD. I went ahead and purchased one, attached it to the motherboard, cloned Windows, did a quick boot sector fix, and was up and running splendidly for several weeks.

Until I did a cold boot (!!) This time, however, instead of getting a no boot device detected error, somehow, it seems that there is now a BIOS password on the SSD! A menu pops up showing that the SSD is "locked" and asks me to enter a password. After several failed attempts at entering a password, the menu says I need to contact Acer customer support with this issue, and spits out an error code (which changes each time this occurs).

It is a complete mystery to me how this BIOS HD password on the SSD was set - there is not even an option to set an HD password in the BIOS for this machine (in contrast, I am able to set a BIOS password to enter the BIOS...).

Does anyone have any ideas what on earth is going on here? Is this a virus? Is this motherboard's M.2 slot on the fritz? I'm so stumped by this.

The best solution is to get a 2.5" SATA-3 6GB/sec drive as you have provisions for two on the TC-780 (I always use the Samsung 2.5” EVO range as I've been using them for over 4 years without any problems) as these drives will have the same specs and speed as a SATA-3 6GB/sec M.2 drive. It could be that the M.2 slot and plug is damaged and/or not working properly or your M,2 drive that you had was not of a high quality drive and it just wore out, as a good quality SATA-3 M.2 drive should not be doing that and should last much longer.