WD_Black SN850 not detected by BIOS on bootup from power-off

WD Internal SSD WD_BLACK | Blue | Red | Green | Gold SSD
141

I had a reasonably good understanding of how old BIOS worked, but UEFI has been somewhat of a mystery to me, and now searching for info regarding fast boot, windows 11 and UEFI, some articles seem to suggest that it is OS that is modifying the part of code that motherboard is using to look for and wake up the devices necessary for booting the system.

So if that is true, then changing Windows settings does indeed affect how motherboard is executing the boot sequence, perhaps something as simple as a timeout timer being too short to wait for the SSD to power up and start talking is to blame, if that wait time is too short, perhaps due to capacitance in power supply circuit on the SSD itself is charging up just a tiny bit longer, and the increased capacitance might be a result of power hungry chips on the SSD (performance orientated design), hence turning the pc off, and turning back on always seems to fix the problem (built up charge hasnā€™t yet had time to bleed off).

And just maybe there are some strict standards in UEFI regarding these wake up times, so if WD is asking Microsoft or m/b manufacturers to adjust the timers, they simply get told off to fix their design, which might be too integrated to be easily fixed (read - cost effective).

Anyway, no issues since my previous post after switching the fast boot off. Anecdotally, the issues started when I installed GRUB to boot Ubuntu along with Windows from that same SSDā€¦

edit: Mar 21 update, 3 weeks with fast boot off - not a single not detected power up, everything runs 100% fine

142

Regarding fast boot, the AMD B550 and Intel B365 motherboard systems do run Windows but I have always had fast boot off. These systems are also typically on 24/7 with sleep and hibernate disabled as well. I guess something could still be happening when the system is powered off for the rare occasion though with the B365 system, I only ever saw it manifested after the system became unresponsive (as if the nvme had been detached while the OS was running).

I did end up replacing the SN750 in both of these systems with Seagate Firecuda 530s. No recurrence of the issue(s) to date. I would love to find a use for all these SN NVMEs but I just canā€™t trust them.

143

Brand new WD Black SN850X 2TB NVMe is showing the same cold boot issue on my PC. Itā€™s running the latest firmware (620331WD) and the PC (motherboard = MSI X570 Creation) is fully up to date. 95% of the time the NVMe is not detected by BIOS ; it takes a good 15+ minutes of reboots and cold boots and power cycles to finally get the drive to be detected. I never had this issue on the same PC with older WD NVMeā€™s.

I am returning the drive as soon as the replacement NVMe arrives tomorrow. The replacement is not a Western Digital product.

Based on the lackluster response from WD itā€™s unlikely Iā€™ll buy another WD NVMe ever again.

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144

Geez! This thread, about WD Black SN850 with or without heat sink, has been going on since 2020 or 22. Bought mine on October 2022 and completed my build on first week of November 2022. As part of my ā€œdue diligenceā€ before purchasing this drive I wish I had found this thread, I would not have purchase it.

MSI PRO Z690-A
Core i7-12700K
128 GB RQM of Kingston Fury Beast (on MOBO QVL)
1TB WD Black SN850 (with heatsink) as OS drive on slot M2_1 (handled by CPU)
4 TB WD Blue gen 3 SSD on SATA III port 1 (not on MSIā€™s QVL) as my data drive.
MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC GPU on PCIe_1 (support PCIe 5.0 x16)
Tower Air cooled by Noctua NH-U12A chromax.Black, 120mm Single-Tower CPU Cooler (Black)
6 Noctua chroma.Black.swap 120mm 4-pin PWM fans

OS Windows 11 64 bits

After completion (including the mandatory tests of one by one of all components ā€”memory test takes painfully long), my PC worked without problems until last week of February, when after powering off one day, the next day it would start directly to BIOS, where my (according to MSIā€™s QVL) supported drive wasnā€™t detected. Weird, since the unsupported WD BLUE SATA drive was, and the only thing I couldnā€™t do from BIOS was test it.

I have followed all usual steps, which are practically unassembled the PC, clear the CMOS, button flashing bios and install and test component by component, slots and connecting cables (MOBO, GPU, SATA SSD) on both ends. I have also asked for support from MSI, WD, Intel and Microsoft, but no other than canned unhelpful answers.

As Iā€™ve seen here, thereā€™re complains about the same issue with this WD SSD happening to many, with many different MOBOS and chipsets, Windows and Ubuntu. So, logic dictates that this WD SN850 NVMe drive is the culprit.

145

Hi !

Sorry how messy this post is going to be, first time here and english is my second language.
In short, iā€™ve encounted the exact same problem today after buying the WD SN850X.
But I have found a solution so ill do my best to share by going through my steps that iā€™ve done for the past 5-6 hours.

To begin with, hereā€™s my build:

  • MB: MSI x570 Gaming Edge Wifi
  • CPU:AMD Ryzen 5 3600x
  • RAM:32 GB Vengence Corsair
    Storage:
  • 2 TB SN850X
  • 1x SSD 860 evo 1TB
  • 2x 1TB Barracuda
    GPU:Gigabyte 3080TI
    All of that on windows 11

In short, I believe Iā€™ve done all the suggestions Iā€™ve found here.
So I have tried multiples m.2 slots on my motherboard before going around the BIOS.
While doing the BIOS tests, Iā€™ve used the m.2-1 slot behind the shield.
When I realized that my BIOS wasnā€™t on the latest firmware, I flashed it with an NTFS USB key (Tried multiple times with a exFAT foolishly)
Although I donā€™t believe that 100% fixed it, thereā€™s so many more options that showed up that I cannot help but suggest doing that just for future uses.

Anyways, then I tried updating everything I could think of.
Started with all the other drives, Windows itself until I reached my chipset.
Someone in what I believe is a Reddit post suggested the op to reseat their CPU considering it might be a pin connection problem. Being 4 am currently, I wasnā€™t going to clean my CPU tonight but I have tried to update it. Althought I might not know the absolute awnser, I believe that for AMD users, just updating your chipset and your processor if possible might help if not fix it as it worked for me.
I do hope something similar might be the awnser key for you CarlosGM even with an i7!

Because with the help of the AMD software adrenalin program and with a small reset afterwards, I was able to see it not only in the BIOS. But I could also go to the disk manager and actually manipulate it.
Afterwards, it is easy to update the firmware with the WD app.

Hopefully this can perhaps fix some of you that still havenā€™t returned it and hopefully a proper step by step can be made with a absolute 100% success rate soon for future people with this issue. I do hope that WD actually work on this issue with us in the future aswell.

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146

Hi. Thank you for tasking the time to work on this and share your results after working on it for hours until 4 am. I must say that Iā€™ve done all that, even removing the CPU from the LGA 1700 socket and verified that there werenā€™t damaged pins in it, and visible damages in the CPU. There were none as I watched them closely thru a magnifying glass. I have also dissembled the rest of my PC, checked slots (for damage or dust), device pins and cables (when it applies) taking care of blowing them to remove any dust specks if there were any, and for cables being set in PSU side, Motherboard, PCIe GPU card, SATA, etc. I even checked the connectors from FANs to headers as well as those from Motherboard to front buttons (PW, Reset, USB ports, etc.). Then reassembled it again as it were new: clearing CMOS, Button Flash BIOS with latest version for this MOBO on MSI site, and inserting and testing on POST if each inserted component was detected. In the case of memory sticks (4 x 32GB each) I have done a very long process of testing each DIMM (on slot A2) using MemTest86 running overnight (it takes long), then leaving a good one and testing the other three (one night each) on Slot B2. And so on until I was satisfied that not the DIMS nor the slots had trouble.

Regarding BIOS settings; Iā€™ve have not, aside from: changing POST settings to enable beep on POST, disabling MSI and Windows Fast Boot, and, in the overclock settings, changing the CPU cooler from Water Colling to Air Tower cooler donā€™t . For the rest, I havenā€™t made any changes from the ā€œOptimized Defaultsā€ I do not overclock so, I have not change voltages or anything else related to overclocking. I donā€™t even use XMP, although I have tried enabling it and disabled it with same results. The only other thing I have changed in BIOS is the source sensors for the PWM Smart Fan function according to the case fan position and function (intake or exhaust).

At one point, since when I power-off the PC I also switched off the PSU plus the UPS to which it is connected to the AC. I thought it might be a CMOS battery problem; so first I bought to new ones and tested. Same result, then I stopped switching off PSU and CPU, but same results. PC starting directly to BIOS, where I corroborated that my settings were still as I left them.

There is a weird thing, though, when my PC starts directly to BIOS the WD Black SN850 as boot drive is not detected, but if I run secure erase from BIOS, it restarts, and surprise! th WD Black SN850 is detected. When that happens I dont erase, let it reboot and the drive is ā€œStillā€ there, so I have run NVMe SSD test from BIOS and no errors were detected. Same when I finally manage (after many shutdowns and cold boots) to boot to Windows (SN850 detected) Iā€™ve run WD Dashboard Extended SMART test, as well as Windows Disk Management test and both came out trouble free. Also from Dashboard my WD Black SN850 was updated to Firmware Version: 614900WD.

This is my build:

  • MB: MSI PRO Z690-A (DDR5 version, no WiFi)
  • CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K
  • RAM: 128GB Kingston Fury Beast (4x32GB)
  • Storage:
    - 1TB SN850X (OS Boot Drive) on Slot M2_1 Between CPU and PCIE_1
    - 4TB WD Blue SATA III SSD on SATA Port 1 (dunny fact, not on MSI QVL list, but itā€™s always
    detected by BIOS)
  • GPU: MSI GeForce-RTX-3060-VENTUS-2X-12G-OC
  • OS: Windows 11 HOME (64 BITS) release 22H2

All drivers are updated using:

  • MSI Center Live update feature
  • Microsoft update from Device Manager
  • NVidia latest WHQL update for my GPU

Final note (knock on wood): today my PC booted to Windows right away on power on. Some times this happens for 2 to 3 days and the the problem starts again.

147

Ive encountered a similar issue yesterday. After a bit of over 1 year of moderate use(about 70% was filled with data and most of it games, that were just installed and not reinstalled) mostly just day to day use. In the morning I closed the lid of my laptop and went to work. Came back home and my laptop started power cycling without even allowing me to enter bios(just black screen not even the manufacturer logo).

After reseating and replacing both RAM sticks it did not work. Resetting the CMOS did not work. Trying to find the laptop lid sensor with a magnet for like 3 hours(bear in mind I didint get any output on my screen nor my secondary display at all, and a single power cycle took about 1- 1.5 min and nobody got time to wait that long when troubleshooting a non working display) after assuming my lid sensor broke and laptop was stuck in sleep mode, no luck.

After disconnecting both my m.2 drives from their sockets finally got a display output and a bios screen. After some testing I found that as soon as I insert the WD drive into any slot in any configuration with or without the 2nd m.2 my pc starts power cycling, even if its not the main boot device set in the bios, so I cannot do any testing like that.

Ive ordered an external enclosure for the m.2 and will see if I can revive the drive in any way and will post an update if sucesfull.

UPDATE: Ive gotten an external m.2 enclosure. After connecting it to the computer it gives the usb connection sound. The m.2 does not appear in windows explorer as a storage device. I checked diskmgmt windows software and it comes up as an uninitialized storage device without any partitions detected. Ive tried to initialize it both as GPT and MBR but I get an error that that is an invalid function. Guess ill have to wait for WD to finish their maitenance of their website and submit it for warranty(drive is 1 year old and definitely didint exceed read and write limits).

148

If anyone is looking to buy this drive DO NOT BUY IT.

If the drive malfunctions, WD seems to be unable to honor warranty and RMA terms and conditions due to a recent cyber security incident. I have been waiting for a refund since 3/30 and WD is unwilling or unable to give me an update.

So I have $180 sitting in limbo until WD gets their act together.

I have a number of WD hard drives with 3-5 years of warranty remaining so I really donā€™t want to burn any bridges yet. But Iā€™m wondering if my credit card company needs to be involved now due to WD delivering a non-functional product and keeping my money.

149

I just want to point out that thereā€™s absolutely no chance of drivers ever fixing this. Booguette mentioned this because their drive is working for now, but itā€™s impossible that a driver could fix a BIOS detection problem. Itā€™s very likely that after a restart or powering on the PC in the future, youā€™re going to eventually run into this problem again. Thatā€™s because for many people, including myself, these drives will sometimes be detected by the BIOS on boot, but other times they wont be detected. So you could go for several boots/restarts and everything is fine, but eventually youā€™ll run into this problem again. For some people the drive is detected most of the time, but for others itā€™s almost never detected.

When a PC is powered on it is the BIOS that detects the NVMe drive. Windows or literally any other OS hasnā€™t been loaded yet. Itā€™s solely down to the BIOS to detect the NVMe drive. So an AMD chipset driver wont do anything, because drivers are for the OS. They do not interact with the BIOS or the physical chipset, and they do not interact with the drives firmware either. You can have no OS installed and this drive detection problem will still exist.

This is also why some peoples computers are stuck in boot loops - When you have the OS installed on these drives and theyā€™re not being detected in the BIOS, the computer obviously wont find any OS to load, so youā€™ll either get an infinite boot loop or it will go straight into the BIOS menu.

Realistically thereā€™s only two possible causes for this problem:

  1. Itā€™s the drive.
  2. Itā€™s the BIOS.

It canā€™t be the aforementioned CPU pin issue either, because thereā€™s only 1 or 2 pins on the CPU that could cause this issue, so not only would we all need to have a CPU pin problem, we would all need to have this problem with the same pins, out of 1500+ pins on a modern CPU. The chances of this happening are practically zero considering how widespread this problem is. But importantly, because other NVMe drives are working fine in the same M.2 slots for myself and others, thereā€™s no way itā€™s a pin problem.

And both of my SN850X drives have this BIOS detection problem (4TB and 2TB capacities). The ā€œXā€ variant of this drive is a newer version of the SN850 (which this thread is about), but obviously WD still hasnā€™t fixed this problem even on their latest and greatest drives. Totally incompetent and embarrassing.

BTW thereā€™s 41 posts here that mention MSI motherboards. Thereā€™s also many mentions of the AMD X570 chipset. These both seem to be most affected. But i have an Asus motherboard with a TRX40 chipset, and several other people have mentioned Asus, Intel and other brands, but MSI and X570 are by far the most mentioned. There also hasnā€™t been any mention (yet) of newer AMD X670 or B650 boards. Maybe they donā€™t have this problemā€¦ I might be getting an X670 board soon and will post an update if i do.

One weird thing with my Asus ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming board is that if i connect either of my SN850X drives to a M.2 slot that is connected to chipset controlled PCIe lanes, then it wont be detected 8 out of 10 times on boot. But if i connect it to a slot that uses CPU PCIe lanes, it will be detected 99% of the timeā€¦ BUT then 7 out of 10 times itā€™s only running in PCIe gen 3 speed instead of gen 4. So even when either drive is detected they donā€™t work properly most of the time (you can check the PCIe lane speed by running the WD ā€˜Dashboardā€™ app).

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150

WD contacted me to state it would be several weeks before they can process RMAā€™s again, and they said theyā€™ll be happy to send me a replacement once the system is online again.

I got approval for a refund and Iā€™m not waiting ā€œa few weeksā€ to find out whether or not theyā€™ll truly refund me.

That was the last straw for me. I sent the paperwork to the credit card company to dispute the charge.

151

Just got the chance to see this, sorry for the long wait.

You ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  right lmao, this thing worked for like a couple of weeks before going into another set of unable to find the drive on the motherboard.

I hope that the very very temporary fix might help people save some files before dying. But please get away from this product. Too much headache for the money youā€™ll save on this.

Itā€™s terrible that this is getting pushed under the rug too.

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152

Having the same issue with a SN850X on a X670e-i ASUS MoBo. Neither BIOS or Windows recognize the SSD. Running out of options here

153

If you have not already, just return the drive. This product seems to be suffering from serious design defects.

154

I thought I was going crazy before discovering this thread.
Just got a 2TB SN850X from prime day deals.
I cloned over my current m.2 boot drive (HP EX920 1TB) using Macrium Reflect.
At first I was getting BSOD after waking up my pc from an extended sleep to then be greeted with my bios and no m.2 detected. This would happen constantly and would only boot to windows after the 3rd attempt. I thought that maybe the clone was bad so I recloned it.
Same story. :frowning:

Specs:
5800x3D
MSI B450 tomahawk Max
Bios is from April 27 2023

155

Send it back, as long as you can!!! WD ignores this problen! There will never be a solution for it! Buy an other brand like Crucial, Kingston,ā€¦ I have zero issues with their products and my x570 chipset. E.g. KC3000, Fury, or Crucial

156

Why you got SN850X when you MB support just Gen3ā€¦?

158

Have plans to upgrade mobo and gpu in the future :slight_smile:
(Sorry for double post, not sure if the first one replied directly or not)

159

I had a similar issue and I switched the BIOS from RAID ON, which uses RST to AHCI/NVMe and all issues gone, furthermore my speeds increased dramatically

20230730_114120
20230730_1141201920Ɨ1102 98.6 KB

Hope this helps

Duke

160

For me with AMD Ryzen 5800X, ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero MB and SN850X 4TB disk turning on ā€œGaming Mode 2.0ā€ actually helped pretty well.

Previously it went away during almost every sleep (which crashed a system in many wierd ways) and often did not appear during cold start-up, but after turning this mode on I cannot reproduce the issue so far.

161

Problem started after accidental reboot. Tried three different computers with same result. No partions, even nvme0, only controller.
in linux log:

lspci -nn
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Sandisk Corp WD PC SN810 / Black SN850 NVMe SSD [15b7:5011] (rev 01)
dmesg
[   12.441365] nvme nvme0: Device not ready; aborting initialisation, CSTS=0x0
[   12.441374] fbcon: Taking over console
[   12.441380] nvme nvme0: Removing after probe failure status: -19