Hard drive not working with Z690 Maximus Hero

Vector Sigma · 17 Dec 2022 at 01:18

Hi,

I have the Z690 Maximus Hero motherboard. I have 9 hard drives.

- Six 8TB SSDs (Samsung 870 QVO)

- Three M.2 drives (250GB Samsung 980 Pro, 2TB 980 Samsung Pro and 8TB Corsair MP400)

I tried to install my 10th drive which, is a 1TB 980 Samsung Pro and I fitted in one of two slots under the PCI slot. However, in doing so, my system doesn't boot to Windows. I get as far as the screen where I am prompted to press the Delete or F2 key to access the BIOS and then it just freezes. I tried the 2nd slot, but same result.

I reset the CMOS by pressing the button behind my computer and checked the boot priority configuration - it is booting from the correct M.2 drive (1TB Samsung 980 Pro) and not the one just installed (250GB Samsung 980 Pro), but same result.

Please find the attached image to see which, slots were used. All other 3 slots are used for the already installed M.2 drives

Please explain how I overcome the problem.

Thank you.

LuckyBenski · 17 Dec 2022 at 01:32

It's not entirely clear - I'm guessing you have at least some of your SSDs in one of the PCIe x16 slots? Is this the existing ones or the new one?

That board has 3 M.2 slots and comes with the Hyper M.2 card to fit 2 SSDs into a PCIe x16 slot I believe. What is your setup?

lsg1r · 17 Dec 2022 at 01:43

As it's not's entirely clear what you're actually doing I'm guessing it's likely to do with the below

From the spec list...
When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_1 or PCIEX16(G5)_2, Hyper M.2_2 slot will be disabled.

Vector Sigma · 17 Dec 2022 at 01:48

LuckyBenski said:
It's not entirely clear - I'm guessing you have at least some of your SSDs in one of the PCIe x16 slots? Is this the existing ones or the new one?

That board has 3 M.2 slots and comes with the Hyper M.2 card to fit 2 SSDs into a PCIe x16 slot I believe. What is your setup?

Hi,

All 6 SSD drives are connected to the SATA ports.

One M.2 is in the slot beneath the CPU and the other two are in the Hyper M.2 card.

Vector Sigma · 17 Dec 2022 at 01:50

lsg1r said:
As it's not's entirely clear what you're actually doing I'm guessing it's likely to do with the below

From the spec list...
When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_1 or PCIEX16(G5)_2, Hyper M.2_2 slot will be disabled.

I don't quite understand what this means? There are two more M.2 slots available, do you mean they're both disabled because of the Hyper M.2 card?

lsg1r · 17 Dec 2022 at 09:59

Vector Sigma said:
I don't quite understand what this means? There are two more M.2 slots available, do you mean they're both disabled because of the Hyper M.2 card?

If you put the hyper m2 slot in either of the top two pcie slots it will disable the left m2 slot from the pair at the bottom.

Basically if you've put the hyper m2 in either of the top pcie slots and the new m2 card in the left hand slot at the bottom then the new m2 card will not work. It 'should' work if you put the new drive into the right hand slot at the bottom.... but I'm just basing this on the spec page of the motherboard.

Vector Sigma · 17 Dec 2022 at 15:41

lsg1r said:
If you put the hyper m2 slot in either of the top two pcie slots it will disable the left m2 slot from the pair at the bottom.

Basically if you've put the hyper m2 in either of the top pcie slots and the new m2 card in the left hand slot at the bottom then the new m2 card will not work. It 'should' work if you put the new drive into the right hand slot at the bottom.... but I'm just basing this on the spec page of the motherboard.

I've tried both slots and neither works.

lsg1r · 17 Dec 2022 at 16:17

Vector Sigma said:
I've tried both slots and neither works.

Then you're going to need to give us more info... pictures would be helpful too.

Having said that you're using the board in an incredibly niche way which could be part of the issue.... not many would need the amount of SSD based storage you have.

Vector Sigma · 17 Dec 2022 at 16:29

lsg1r said:
Then you're going to need to give us more info... pictures would be helpful too.

Having said that you're using the board in an incredibly niche way which could be part of the issue.... not many would need the amount of SSD based storage you have.

What information and pictures do you require?

lsg1r · 17 Dec 2022 at 19:08

Vector Sigma said:
What information and pictures do you require?

As much that's relevant really, your original post and follow ups have still left a fair bit out... we don't even know where the hyper card is plugged in for example, we're assuming one of the top two slots. We don't know what else is installed such as say a graphics card.

edit:
Seems like you've already posted about this topic....and that's before you added in some extra drives by the looks of it...

Installing my 10th hard drive - bandwidth compromise

Hi, I wanted to get 2nd opinion from the OC community. I have a Z690 system with a 12900k CPU, 3090 GPU, Maximus Z690 (Hero) 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 9 drives. I have six Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB (4 of them in Raid 0), one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 250GB, one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB and...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Honestly it sounds like you might have run out of pcie lanes... some tinkering in the bios might change the distribution of the lanes but it will hit the performance of other areas.

Tetras · 17 Dec 2022 at 22:58

It looks like if you want 2 M.2 slots active on the Hyper M.2 card, you have to install it into the third full length PCI-E slot (G4) and enable bifurcation of 4X/4X in the BIOS for this slot. I'm not sure how the manual figures this, because it says elsewhere the slot is only 4 lane.
It appears (chapter 1: page 8) that the other PCI-E slots will only give you 1 M.2 active on the Hyper M.2 card, which also doesn't make sense, because doing so steals 8 from the graphics card?

The other M.2 slots (on the board itself), I think you should be able to use.

If I understand you correctly though, you have 3 M.2 drives and you have 1 placed in the top-most M.2 slot (which is CPU-linked) and then 2 in the Hyper M.2 card? Personally, I would not have done this, I'd have connected all three to the board first and only one on the Hyper M.2 card. Is there a reason you used the Hyper M.2 card first?

Do you have a crappy spare M.2 drive somewhere? It could be that the new drive is just broken.

Vector Sigma · 18 Dec 2022 at 01:16

lsg1r said:
As much that's relevant really, your original post and follow ups have still left a fair bit out... we don't even know where the hyper card is plugged in for example, we're assuming one of the top two slots. We don't know what else is installed such as say a graphics card.

edit:
Seems like you've already posted about this topic....and that's before you added in some extra drives by the looks of it...

Installing my 10th hard drive - bandwidth compromise

Hi, I wanted to get 2nd opinion from the OC community. I have a Z690 system with a 12900k CPU, 3090 GPU, Maximus Z690 (Hero) 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 9 drives. I have six Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB (4 of them in Raid 0), one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 250GB, one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB and...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Honestly it sounds like you might have run out of pcie lanes... some tinkering in the bios might change the distribution of the lanes but it will hit the performance of other areas.

92344305e29e5142408a07e62586703308fb09bfd4b2dc0e6907593e3423c00ea2f8f549.jpg

05100759cb118850097e976d5d09b016e219f390c86b8f4842c8abb0af57a3a9cee2761b.jpg

038467572ee4482c9ac653aab820bfa60c73e1a51a95cb2b315b2bf24f5c46287161dba7.jpg

86828911264e22cfda9fde0e49c6775346e3cf6decf0c745703422ff245c7fc495d72a43.jpg

Vector Sigma · 18 Dec 2022 at 01:19

Tetras said:
It looks like if you want 2 M.2 slots active on the Hyper M.2 card, you have to install it into the third full length PCI-E slot (G4) and enable bifurcation of 4X/4X in the BIOS for this slot. I'm not sure how the manual figures this, because it says elsewhere the slot is only 4 lane.
It appears (chapter 1: page 8) that the other PCI-E slots will only give you 1 M.2 active on the Hyper M.2 card, which also doesn't make sense, because doing so steals 8 from the graphics card?

The other M.2 slots (on the board itself), I think you should be able to use.

If I understand you correctly though, you have 3 M.2 drives and you have 1 placed in the top-most M.2 slot (which is CPU-linked) and then 2 in the Hyper M.2 card? Personally, I would not have done this, I'd have connected all three to the board first and only one on the Hyper M.2 card. Is there a reason you used the Hyper M.2 card first?

Do you have a crappy spare M.2 drive somewhere? It could be that the new drive is just broken.

Hi,

This is way the system was put together for me and I don't have a spare M.2 drive.

So, you're saying, I need to move the ROG Hyper M.2 card up a slot, enable bifurcation in BIOS and then the M.2 slots will be useable?

Tetras · 18 Dec 2022 at 01:22

Vector Sigma said:
So, you're saying, I need to move the ROG Hyper M.2 card up a slot, enable bifurcation in BIOS and then the M.2 slots will be useable?

G4 is the bottom slot, I believe.

Your Hyper M.2 card slots (at least, 1 & 2) already work, do they not? If they do, then I don't think it will help.

Vector Sigma · 18 Dec 2022 at 01:35

Tetras said:
G4 is the bottom slot, I believe.

Your Hyper M.2 card slots (at least, 1 & 2) already work, do they not? If they do, then I don't think it will help.

Yes, they do.

lsg1r · 18 Dec 2022 at 12:29

Tetras said:
G4 is the bottom slot, I believe.

Your Hyper M.2 card slots (at least, 1 & 2) already work, do they not? If they do, then I don't think it will help.

G4 is the bottom slot.

I'm thinking the hyper card needs to be moved up to G5_2 (second pcie slot), then the m2 drives on the motherboard need to be in the top slot (M2_1) and the right hand side of the bottom slot (M2_3) for it to work.
Based on what I've read that seems to be the intended location for the hyper card when you have a gpu in it.

Outside of that it's basically faulty hardware (need replacement m2) or overall lack of bandwidth imo but like I said that @Vector Sigma is using it in quite a niche way so we might have come across an issues that even Asus aren't aware of.

Tetras · 18 Dec 2022 at 15:51

lsg1r said:
Based on what I've read that seems to be the intended location for the hyper card when you have a gpu in it.

Did you read that in the manual? My understanding of the manual is that it should be in G4?

lsg1r · 18 Dec 2022 at 16:35

Tetras said:
Did you read that in the manual? My understanding of the manual is that it should be in G4?

'specs' page on the website from all those lovely asterisk's... or at least that's how I read it for this setup anyway (not fully read the manual). Not saying G4 shouldn't work it just seems that it might be better for this layout but in all honesty it kind of feels like Asus have given users the option of too many m2 slots and should have just stuck with the three onboard ones.

Expansion Slots
Intel® 13th & 12th Gen Processors*
2 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slots (support x16 or x8/x8 modes)**
Intel® Z690 Chipset***
1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (supports x4, x4/x4 modes)
* Please check PCIe bifurcation table in Chapter 1.
** When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_1, PCIEX16(G5)_2 will run x8 only and if ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_2, PCIEX16(G5)_1 will run x8 only.
*** Supports Intel® Optane Memory H Series on PCH-attached PCIe slot.

Storage
Supports 5 x M.2 slots and 6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports
Total supports 5 x M.2 slots and 6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports*
Intel® 13th & 12th Gen Processors
M.2_1 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280/22110 (supports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode.)
- Intel® 13th & 12th Gen processors support PCIe 4.0 x4 mode.
Hyper M.2_1 slot (Key M) via ROG Hyper M.2 card, type 2242/2260/2280/22110***
- Intel® 13th & 12th Gen processors support PCIe 5.0 x4 mode
Intel® Z690 Chipset**
M.2_2 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 3.0 x4 mode)
M.2_3 slot (Key M), type 2242/2260/2280 (supports PCIe 4.0 x4 & SATA modes)
Hyper M.2_1 slot (Key M) via ROG Hyper M.2 card, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 (suppports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)***
Hyper M.2_2 slot (Key M) via ROG Hyper M.2 card, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 (suppports PCIe 4.0 x4 mode)****
6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports*****
* Intel® Rapid Storage Technology supports NVMe RAID 0/1/5, SATA RAID 0/1/5/10.
** Intel® Rapid Storage Technology supports Intel® Optane Memory H Series on PCH attached M.2 slots.
*** When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_1, Hyper M.2_1 slot can support PCIe 4.0 x4 mode. When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_2, Hyper M.2_1 slot can support PCIe 5.0 x4 mode. When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G4), Hyper M.2_1 and Hyper M.2_2 slots can support PCIe 4.0 x4 mode.
**** When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G5)_1 or PCIEX16(G5)_2, Hyper M.2_2 slot will be disabled. When ROG Hyper M.2 card is installed on PCIEX16(G4), Hyper M.2_1 and Hyper M.2_2 slots can support PCIe 4.0 x4 mode.
***** RAID configuration and boot drives are not supported on the SATA6G_E1-2 ports

Tetras · 18 Dec 2022 at 16:39

lsg1r said:
'specs' page on the website from all those lovely asterisk's... or at least that's how I read it for this setup anyway (not fully read the manual). Not saying G4 shouldn't work it just seems that it might be better for this layout but in all honesty it kind of feels like Asus have given users the option of too many m2 slots and should have just stuck with the three onboard ones.

From what I read of those specs it says the same thing as the manual, in that, if the card is installed in G5_1 or G5_2, then Hyper M.2 slot 2 is disabled (this one: ****). In G4, both slots work.

lsg1r · 18 Dec 2022 at 16:53

Tetras said:
From what I read of those specs it says the same thing as the manual, in that, if the card is installed in G5_1 or G5_2, then Hyper M.2 slot 2 is disabled (this one: ****). In G4, both slots work.

Based on the image they've got the hyper drive in the bottom slot and it's not working, assuming the drive isn't broken, it just reads to me like it needs to go up a slot.

For the time it takes to remove the hyper card and plug it back in again it's not going to hurt just to check either way.... besides it wouldn't be the first time a manual is wrong lol
It's also something they were advised wouldn't work by the (I'm assuming) company that built it... relinking below in case you missed it

Installing my 10th hard drive - bandwidth compromise

Hi, I wanted to get 2nd opinion from the OC community. I have a Z690 system with a 12900k CPU, 3090 GPU, Maximus Z690 (Hero) 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 9 drives. I have six Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB (4 of them in Raid 0), one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 250GB, one NVMe Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB and...

forums.overclockers.co.uk