AN515-58. NVMe problem not a driver issue, but a hardware problem, BIOS to make it work reliably?

RomanShein

I've treated myself with a very nice, high-performance PNY CS3140 4TB SSD (Phison PS5018-E18 controller).

The SSD is great, …when it works. Unfortunately, it works unreliably. The NVMe tend to disappear from BIOS after powering on or waking up from hibernation.

The native Micron and SATA SSD work just fine. Thus it is a compatibility issue between this specific SSD and the motherboard, not a driver issue, but a hardware problem,

Can I do something in the BIOS to make it work reliably?

I suspect Acer heavily tweaks BIOS to squeeze every last bit of performance out of hardware (and we buy Nitro for performance, indeed). They could mess up PCIE compatibility somehow…

Any advice?

[Edited the thread to add model name and issue detail]

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/698860/nitro-51-58-nvme-problem-not-a-driver-issue-but-a-hardware-problem-bios-to-make-it-work-reliably

I presume that the model laptop that you have and you quoted as the Nitro 51-58 is the Nitro AN515-58? Because the PNY CS3140 4TB SSD is a high-capacity Gen 4 drive, the laptop might not initialize the drive always, hence and why its not recognized and/or showing sometime, so when this happens, try to go into Disk Management (as it should be showing there) and initialize the drive whenever its not showing, also. update the bios to the last version 2.10 and reinstall the AN515-58 IRST (Intel® Rapid Storage Technology) Driver version 19.5.0.1037 and see if doing all that fixes your problem with this M.2 SSD 4TB drive. Good luck.

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RomanShein

I presume that the model laptop that you have and you quoted as the Nitro 51-58 is the Nitro AN515-58?

-Correct, AN515-58.

update the bios to the last version 2.10 
- Already on 2.10

Once again, it is not a driver or initialisation/partitioning issue. The drive is partitioned and initialized, formatted as GPT.

The problem is with the cold boot episodes. At times the drive is not visible neither in BIOS, nor in Windows at all. The hardware perceives the slot as empty.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1254259#Comment_1254259

Do a "clean all" format of this 4TB M.2 disk and completely format all data to an unrecoverable state and then reinitialize the drive again in Disk Management when its finished. This is what I had to do to an M.2 SSD boot drive that was not recognized and after the "clean all" format, it was initialized and given a drive letter and this 1TB drive was recognized by windows perfectly, try that as that could be a fix. Good luck.

Note: the clean all format, can take up to 12 hours to do for a 4TB drive, as this format will write over every sector on the disk and zero out completely to delete data on the disk. And the deleted data cannot be recovered via usual tools.

Steps to run “clean all” command on SSD

From the "diskpart clean vs. clean all" above, we know that Diskpart clean all command is more secure to delete everything on the solid-state drive and decrease data recovery possibility. So many users would like to use this command when it is necessary to clean the SSD drive. Below is how to do it step by step.

Before proceeding:
▸Go to Disk Management to check the disk number of the SSD drive you want to erase and remember it to ensure you erase the right disk.
▸If you want to keep something important on the SSD drive, you can back up them to another hard drive via free backup software.

1. Open the elevated command prompt: click "start" button, input "cmd" in the search box and press Enter, right click the program and choose "Run as administrator".

2. In the pop-out command prompt window, type "diskpart" and press Enter to launch the utility.

3. Type "list disk" and press Enter: get a list of disk numbers to select from.

4. Type "select disk #" and press Enter: substitute # for the disk number listed that you want to run "clean all" command on. Here we select disk 2.

5. Type "clean all" and press Enter.

If this answers your question and solved your query please "Click on Yes" or "Click on Like" if you find my answer useful👍

RomanShein

Thanx for the advice, but the problem is hardware-related.
So far, I seem to have promising results by enabling "Auto" for ACPI and disabling "D3Cold" in the hidden Advanced BIOS page. I'm not sure which of those do the trick, yet several cold boots and reboots went fine.
Shame on Acer for disabling the ability to access Advanced BIOS settings in this model.