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  1. Hi,

    I previously ran my computer with Windows 7 on a 240 GB Sandisk SSD Plus in SATA, with an Intel i7 6700K CPU, Asus Maximus Hero VIII and 4x4GB of RAM ; it worked generally fine, and I made extensive use of the hibernation function, usually not doing a full reboot for weeks or even months. A few months ago, I installed a Samsung 950 Pro NVMe / PCI-Express SSD (purchased used but it's perfectly operational according to HD Sentinel), and since then I've had several issues :
    – frequent system crashes / BSOD (after 3 to 10 days of hibernation / wake-up cycles) with no explanation, no error warning in Event viewer, no particular pattern, except that sometimes the display flickers briefly a few seconds before ; sometimes the error on the blue screen is “PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA”, but the last one was “PFN_LIST_CORRUPT” (it's displayed very briefly so it's tricky to make note of the displayed informations or reach for a camera to take a picture before the reboot) ;
    – the delay of waking-up from hibernation is way longer than it used to be (I expected it to be blazingly fast !), about 5 minutes, while the boot time seems about normal and the wake-up from sleep is almost instantaneous ;
    – SATA devices are no longer recognized automatically, or at least not in a consistent manner : sometimes I insert a HDD (I have several hot-swap bays on my case) and have to manually check for new devices in the Device manager, then the drive letter pops up, but then it happens that another HDD which was connected just disappears, and I have to unplug it and plug it again, re-check for new devices, hoping that it won't make another one disappear... (Beside the SSD, I currently have 6 HDDs connected ; one of them has 25 “pending” sectors and a 65% health status in HD Sentinel, but seems stable so far, the other are in perfect condition.)

    Other than that, I haven't noticed a spectacular performance improvement, it pretty much feels the same as before with regards to reactivity (only when I do something special like searching a keyword through the entire system partition with WinHex does it proceed much quicker, but even that is not a night-and-day difference) ; the only significant upside is that I now have an extra SATA port to plug an extra HDD... (Which is one of the reasons why I installed a PCI-E SSD in the first place, and also one of the reasons why I opted for that motherboard even though I'm not interested in current video games, as I tend to distrust external enclosures, which can make the drives run too hot, often have flimsy contacts and a poor quality power supply.)

    If I remember correctly, I cloned the Sandisk SATA SSD to the Samsung PCI-E SSD with GParted from a Lubuntu live system. I had to tinker with the UEFI settings quite a few times, don't remember exactly what I changed, only that it was a huge hassle. Since I didn't have the drive's documentation, I didn't even know that specific drivers were required ; I have the most recent version and there is no warning in Device manager. Since I installed it at the end of the summer, I figured that maybe some of those issues could be caused by overheating (it reached a max. temperature of 55°C on September 5th), but now it couldn't be a factor (according to HD Sentinel it hasn't reached more than 49°C since October 25th and there's no correlation between the dates of highest temperatures and the dates of system failures).

    So, what can I do to troubleshoot and fix those issues, short of going back to the SATA SSD ?

    Thanks.
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  2. Member
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    Start with disconnect all harddrives, everything you don't necessary need and check if your problems are still there. If one harddisk has a problem it could lead to blue screens

    it could be that your used nvme drive has problems or compatibility issues with your motherboard.

    Edit: it could also be a power problem, the nvme uses power from pcie bus, while sata drives are external powered directly from the powersupply.
    Last edited by jan5678; 5th Nov 2018 at 12:59.
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  3. Start with disconnect all harddrives, everything you don't necessary need and check if your problems are still there. If one harddisk has a problem it could lead to blue screens
    That would take quite some time to be sure that it solved at least the main issue, i.e. the system crashes, which happen randomly (or so it seems) every few days.

    it could be that your used nvme drive has problems or compatibility issues with your motherboard.
    That would be surprising as both components are reputed and it's been enough time since their release for the drivers to have been optimized, any remaining issue would be well known and mentioned in reviews / articles / forums. I'll still look into it, but I have a gazillion of things to look into...

    Edit: it could also be a power problem, the nvme uses power from pcie bus, while sata drives are external powered directly from the powersupply.
    How could I test that ? Could such an issue manifest randomly like that ? And wouldn't it have affected other components before ?
    I struggled quite a bit when installing the damn little thing, which I purchased “naked”, without even a special screw (I guess they come with a screw when purchased new, right ?), so I had to test a few spare screws I had laying around, in an awkward position, and hit the board with the screwdriver at some point – could it have damaged something ? Or could there be a bad contact issue because I used an improper screw ? But again, in such a case, how could it work at all ?

    Also, I ran scans with AdwCleaner and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (don't have a full-blown antivirus installed, I'm not even sure if it's a bad thing anymore, I used to have Avira Antivirus, and it became too much trouble for what it was worth), which only found a few inocuous “PUPs”, so nothing serious on that front.
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  4. Banned
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    I currently have 6 HDDs connected ; one of them has 25 “pending” sectors and a 65% health status in HD Sentinel, but seems stable so far,
    start by removing this hard drive
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  5. Member
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    What kind of powersupply do you use? How much is the max power output in watt?

    The manual states this about powersupplys:
    We recommend that you use a PSU with a higher power output when configuring a
    system with more power-consuming devices. The system may become unstable or
    may not boot up if the power is inadequate.
    If you want to use two or more high-end PCIe x16 cards, use a PSU with 1000W
    power or above to ensure the system stability.
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  6. What kind of powersupply do you use? How much is the max power output in watt?
    The manual states this about powersupplys:
    We recommend that you use a PSU with a higher power output when configuring a
    system with more power-consuming devices. The system may become unstable or
    may not boot up if the power is inadequate.
    If you want to use two or more high-end PCIe x16 cards, use a PSU with 1000W
    power or above to ensure the system stability.
    Which manual says that ? The PSU is a 450W Be Quiet with a “Silver” certification, normally should be more than enough for that kind of configuration, with a quite power-efficient CPU (the i7 6700K consumes very little when idle or under a light load), no dedicated graphic card (using the CPU's own graphic circuit), no other extra components except those HDDs. I don't know exactly how much power 3.5" HDDs require, but I do know that they require significantly more when they're powered on and start spinning, so if this was an issue the computer wouldn't start at all with as many HDDs, or would be unstable right away. Usually when the system crashes I'm doing something very lllight like web browsing or typing, sometimes even when there's nobody in the room except the proverbial elephant...

    I tried to tweak some UEFI parameters again, first loading the default settings, which caused the HDDs to no longer appear as removable devices (for some reason the “hot-plug” feature is disabled for all HDDs in the default “recommanded” settings, as well as the “Windows hot-plug notification” option, which apparently concerns only the two extra SATA ports implemented through the ASMedia controler), then went back to the previous settings, except for some minor optimization of the fans' speed. I also tried a Windows utility called verifier.exe, which is supposed to check drivers by “stressing” them, I had BSOD after BSOD until I disabled this thing, but still no hint toward the exact root cause. Since then it hasn't crashed, but it's been only three days, and I still have those annoying issues with the long wake-up time and the inconsistent detection of SATA drives (a drive connected through USB is recognized right away and causes no such trouble).
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