M.2 SSD Not Showing up: How to Fix It and Recover Data from It

What Is M.2 SSD?

The M.2 SSD is one type of Solid-State drive (SSD). To be specific, it is a small form factor SSD that internally mounted storage expansion cards use. For example, Crucial T700 PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD is a newly released M.2 SSD that has the fastest read and write speeds and is welcomed by game players.

The M.2 SSD is usually designed to enable high-performance storage in thin and power-constrained devices, such as laptops and tablet computers. It is smaller than other kinds of SSDs like the mini–serial Advanced Technology Attachment (mSATA).

M.2 SSD Not Showing up or Not Detected on a PC

The M.2 SSD is usually used to expand the storage of a laptop or tablet computer. After you install it on your device or connect it to your computer, you might find that the M.2 SSD is not showing up or detected in BIOS or Disk Management, or in File Explorer.

What happened? Why is my M.2 SSD not showing in BIOS? Why is my M.2 SSD not detected in Disk Management or File Explorer？

Here are the main reasons for these two cases

Case 1: M.2 SSD is not showing up in BIOS

• The BIOS settings are not configured correctly and the M.2 SSD is not enabled.
• The M.2 SSD is not properly connected to your PC.

Case 2: M.2 SSD is not showing up in Disk Management or File Explorer

• The driver is outdated or corrupted.
• There are errors or bad sectors on the SSD.
• The SSD doesn’t have a drive letter.
• The M.2 drive has not been initialized.
• The file system of the SSD partition is damaged.
• You haven’t created partitions on the M.2 SSD.

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Recover Data from an M.2 SSD That Is Not Showing up on PC?

What if the M.2 SSD is not showing up on a PC? You must want to fix the problem and make it work for you. But if there are important files on it, we think you’d better rescue files on it before you fix the issue.

You can use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to recover data from an M.2 SSD that is not showing up or detected in File Explorer.

This file recovery tool is specially designed to recover data from computer internal hard drives, external hard drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, and any other types of data storage devices.

With the free edition of this software, you can scan the drive you want to recover data from and check the data scan results, and recover up to 1 GB of files without paying any cent.

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Here is how to recover data from an M.2 SSD that is not showing up on your PC.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free Edition on your machine. Then, launch it to enter its main interface. This software will display all drives it can detect under Logical Drives.

Step 2: Check if you can see the problematic SSD. If you can see it, you will be able to use this software to rescue files from it. Then, hover over that SSD and click the Scan button to start scanning the drive.

Step 3: The whole scanning process will last for some minutes. You should wait patiently until the process ends. Then, you can see the scanned files including both existing and deleted files.

Usually, these scanned files are categorized by three paths: Deleted Files, Lost Files, and Existing Files. You can open each path to find the files you want to recover. If you only want to recover the existing files, you can directly select the entire Existing Files folder to recover.

Step 4: After selecting your needed files, you can click the Save button and choose a suitable location to save these files. You should not save the selected files to the original location. One reason is that the original SSD is not repaired, the other reason is that any new data might overwrite the lost and deleted files on the original drive.

If the total size of the files you want to recover is no more than 1 GB, this free edition is enough for you. However, if you want to recover more files, you will need to upgrade to an advanced edition.

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MiniTool Software supplies different editions for personal users and business users. If you are a personal user, the Personal Ultimate edition can fully meet your needs.

Now, your data is safe and you can feel free to repair the M.2 drive that is not showing up in BIOS or File Explorer or Disk Management. We collect some easy methods and show them as follows.

Fix 1: Correctly Configure the BIOS Settings

If you want to use an M.2 SSD as the boot drive, you just need to set it as the first boot sequence. But unfortunately, you only find that the M.2 drive is not showing up in BIOS. In a situation like this, you can do these two things: turn on the drive port and turn on the CSM option.

How to turn on the drive port?

You need to boot your computer into BIOS and then go to Drives. Then, you should make sure that all drive ports are enabled.

How to turn on the CSM option?

If your computer has UEFI boot mode only bu the SSD is initialized as an MBR disk, you can easily encounter the issues of M.2 is not showing up in BIOS. On the other hand, if your computer only supports the Legacy boot mode but the SSD is a GPT disk, you can also encounter this problem.

To fix the problem, you can change the boot mode to UEFI or BIOS. Or you can turn on the CSM option to make the M.2 SSD to be detected.

Fix 2: Make sure the M.2 SSD Is Properly Installed

If the M.2 SSD is not showing up in BIOS, you also need to check if the drive is properly installed. Otherwise, the M.2 drive will not be successfully detected.

You can unplug the M.2 SSD and then plug it in again. You need to make sure the SSD is firmly inserted into the M.2 slot.

Fix 3: Initialized the New M.2 SSD

A newly installed M.2 SSD cannot be directly used. You need to first initialize it to MBR or GPT in Disk Management or using a third-party partition manager like MiniTool Partition Wizard. Before that, you can see the M.2 drive in Disk Management but not in File Explorer.

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After initializing the SSD, you can go to File Explorer and check if you can see it.

Fix 4: Update or Reinstall the SSD Driver

If the SSD driver is outdated or corrupt, your computer will not successfully detect it. To fix the driver issue, you can update or reinstall the SSD driver in Device Manager.

Step 1: Press Windows + X to open the WinX menu, then select Device Manager from the menu to open it.

Step 2: Expand Disk drives, then right-click the SSD drive.

• If you want to update the device driver, you need to select Update driver, then Search automatically for drivers, and follow the on-screen guides to update the driver to the latest version.
• If you want to reinstall the SSD driver, you can select Uninstall device, click Uninstall on the pop-up interface to uninstall the driver, and then restart your computer to make the system automatically download and install the latest driver version on your device.

After these two simple steps, you can go to check if the M.2 SSD can be successfully detected by your PC.

Fix 5: Assign a Drive Letter for the SSD

In File Explorer, you can only see the drive that has a drive letter. If you forget to assign a drive letter for the SSD or you remove the drive letter by mistake, you need to add the drive letter back.

You can go to Disk Management to find that SSD and add a drive letter for it. You can also use the Change Drive Letter feature in MiniTool Partition Wizard to assign a new letter for the M.2 drive.

How to add a drive letter in Disk Management?

Step 1: Press Windows + X and then select Disk Management from the WinX menu.

Step 2: Right-click the SSD that has no drive letter, then select Change Drive Letter and Paths from the context menu.

Step 3: Click the Add button on the next page.

Step 4: Select a drive letter for the M.2 drive.

Step 5: Click OK to save the change.

Now, the SSD has a drive letter. You should be able to see the drive in File Explorer.

How to add a drive letter using MiniTool Partition Wizard?

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard on your Windows computer.

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Step 2: Open the software to enter its main interface.

Step 3: Right-click the partition on the SSD and select Change Letter.

Step 4: Select a letter for it.

Step 5: Click OK to continue.

Step 6: Click Apply on the bottom-left corner to make the operation take effect.

Now, you should see the M,2 SSD in File Explorer or in BIOS.

However, if you still cannot see the drive, you can try the next solution.

Fix 6: CHKDSK the M.2 SSD

CHKDSK is a command that can be used in Command Prompt to check the file system and file system metadata of a volume/partition/disk for logical and physical errors. If it is used without parameters, chkdsk displays only the status of the volume and does not fix any errors. So, if you want to use it to fix an SSD, you should use it with the parameters of /r, /f, and /x. Besides, the SSD also should have a drive letter to run this command.

Now, you can follow these steps to run CHKDSK on an SSD:

Step 1: Click the search icon in the taskbar and search for cmd.

Step 2: Right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator. This is to run Command Prompt as administrator.

Step 3: Type chkdsk /*: /f /r into Command Prompt and press Enter. In this step, you need to replace * with the drive letter of the target SSD.

Wait until the process ends. After that, you can close Command Prompt and see if the issue is solved.

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Fix 7: Format the M.2 SSD to Normal

If all of the above methods do not work for you, you can choose to format the M.2 drive to normal.

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If the SSD is not showing up in File Explorer, you can format the drive in Disk Management.

Step 1: Right-click the Start button (the Windows icon in the taskbar) and select Disk Management to open it.

Step 2: Right-click the target drive and select Format.

Step 3: Select a file system and drive label for the SSD if necessary.

Step 4: Deselect Quick Format if necessary.

Step 5: Click Yes to start formatting the drive.

Bottom Line

Here are the easy methods to fix an M.2 SSD that is not showing up in BIOS, Disk Management, or File Explorer. We hope you can find a suitable method for you. In addition, if you want to recover data from an SSD or other types of storage devices, you can just try MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

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If you encounter issues while using MiniTool software, you can contact us via [email protected].