New SSD – A “Ghost” Drive Letter But Otherwise Not Visible to Win 10

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Purchased a new Crucial P2 NVMe 500GB SSD to replace the 64 GB SSD in an Asus notebook.

Drive is mounted in a NIMASO USB 3.1 GEN 2 enclosure.

The “ghost” drive letter can be changed, but that’s it.  Disk Management shows the disk as on line, but no size, no participation, the “Initialize” and “format” options don’t render. My Linux machine doesn’t mount the drive. DOA? Chances it’s the enclosure?

TIA

Ron

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As you’re probably aware, Windows needs to enumerate (1) a new drive, then evaluate its properties (2), capabilities (3) and filesystem format (4) (before storing the results in the registry for subsequent re-use).

These are 4 separate (and, AFAIK, sequential) tasks that need to be completed before a drive letter is allocated (5) , also stored in the registry.

Linux works differently, treating a new drive as just another filesystem object (that needs to be ‘mounted’ before use).

What’s strange from your account is that, under Windows, steps 2-4 appear to have been ignored. I wasn’t aware that was possible for a drive letter to be assigned without the previous steps. (A screenshot of Disk Management would be helpful… ‘cos this is a new one to me.)

Under Linux, the ‘automount’ option of a recognised (properties/capabilities) drive as a filesystem object is apparently missing completely. Equally strange.

IMO it could very well be the bus translation hardware of your drive enclosure is the cause. The only way I can think of to check is to carry out the swap of ‘old to new’ then see whether your notebook’s BIOS/UEFI *recognises* and correctly identifies (by bus) the new, bare drive.

If it does then it suggests the drive enclosure’s bus translation hardware is probably at fault.

Hope this helps…

1 user thanked author for this post.

Shiseiji

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It helped a lot! Cheap netbook, if not careful will be better off to just replace the thing.

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LOL, the spec sheet was wrong! The SSD is soldered to the MB. Can’t do anything.

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Thanks for taking a look. Disk Manager screen shot attached. Hope it’s going to be big enough to be useful.

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What will be big enough? The 60GB internal disk?
Big enough for what?

cheers, Paul

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@paul-t,

I think he means whether the attached image is big enough to be “readable” (which it is, but only if you open it in its own tab.)

@shiseiji

If you take a look thru the reviews at Amazon, there are quite a few buyers who indicated their NIMASO enclosure didn’t work (i.e. their M.2 card worked fine in a different enclosure.) In fact, this review by scott benson “appears” to have the same problem you’re experiencing (i.e. the M.2 card in the enclosure has a drive letter but is inaccessible.)

So maybe you got a bad enclosure?

Also, if your take a look at the reviews of the Crucial PS NVMe, they indicate it has “known buggy” firmware that could also be a factor.

Do you have a way to test the M.2 card itself?

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@alejr Thank you. Very generous with your time to check something I should have thought to check on my own.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the pieces to troubleshoot by replacement. But I do feel much better about sending both back now. And have learned a lesson about triple checking spec sheets.

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You should ask for refund for both the NVMe and NIMASO enclosure.
Hope you paid wisely using PayPal.

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