B350M Pro4 - Cannot Detect M2 bios update 3.00

LuckyG, if the 960 EVO is plugged into the Ultra M.2 socket (closes to processor) and is parallel to the board, then either the 960 is bad or the MB is bad.  Hopefully you can get a friend to lend you a 960 and/or allow you to plug your 960 into their MB.  If not your only choices may be to RMA the 960, then the board if the first does not fix it.  Have you tried loading W10 into your system?  If you can, this should tell you the rest of your system is OK or not.  Enjoy, John.

Thanks, LuckyG, that is very important information (fine before BIOS update) to know.  Bios 3.00 should not have caused you any trouble.  Did you do a Load UEFI Defaults (F9) after the upgrade?  Please open your BIOS and hit F9 then Save and Exit.  Let us know what transpires.  It seems very low probability that updating the BIOS coincided with your 960 dying.  There should be no reason you cannot update to 3.00.  Buying a new 960 is premature right now.  Enjoy, John.

LuckyG wrote: I have an ASRock B350M Pro4. My Samsung M2 nvme 960 evo 500gb cannot be detected in the bios after an update to bios 3.00. I tried rolling back to bios 2.50 but the drive still can't be detected. Anyone have any tips on what I could try next? TIA.

I assume your 960 EVO is in the M2_1 slot.

So the 960 EVO now cannot be detected when using both the 3.00 and 2.50 UEFI versions. I think MisterJ missed that point in your first post. You applied 3.00, the SSD was no longer recognized, you changed to 2.50, and it was still not recognized.

I've used a 500GB 960 EVO with my ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac board from the first time I used the board with a now old 1.60 UEFI version. I've applied multiple UEFI updates and never lost detection of it.

I assume it is your OS drive? Did you happen to have any UEFI options like CSM, or the CSM sub-option, Launch Storage OpROM Policy configured from their default settings?

So the 960 EVO is not shown in the Storage Configuration screen, or in the Boot order?

Was this SSD working fine before it disappeared? Did you happen to check its temperature with any monitoring software when you were using it?

About all I can suggest is removing power from the board completely by turning off the PSU and unplugging it from AC power for several minutes. You could also try removing this SSD from its slot and insert it again.

Given what I have seen in various forums, the 960 EVO seems to have more user failure issues than other Samsung products, that are normally very reliable. If possible, it would be good to try that SSD in another board as a test. Your board's M2_2 slot will only work with SATA M.2 SSDs, so cannot be used to test an NVMe SSD.

There seems to be a rash of reports of failure of the B350 boards to detect the M2 Ultra socket with SSD.  I suggest one or more of you need to open a ticket with ASRock.  Most if not all of us replying here are users not ASRock people.  This is starting to look like a fundamental problem with the MB.  Enjoy, John.

In a weird turn of events, I shutdown the CPU and unplugged the PSU overnight. This morning the drive is miraculously detected again. I'm hoping the system stays stable.