SER9 AI 9 HX370 NVME drive disappeared

thorpemark

I have the SER9 AI 9 HX370 with a Samsung 4TB 990pro as the OS C: drive and a 4TB 990pro w/heatsink (shelled) as the D: drive. It set up fine with WIn11pro and some apps. Lastly, I added ChannelsDVR to use the D drive to store recorded shows. That also went fine. I used Samsung’s Memory Manager and tested and performance rated.. all worked. I tested using Channels DVR software from a TV using the Channels app. It recorded and played back content fine. I had to step away from that project for a week or so but the system was on the whole time and recorded maybe 2 new shows in the interim.

Then today I tried to access the shows from a TV. It looked like it should.. listed the shows etc. But what was happening was it could no longer access files on the D drive. I assume some data is stored with the app on the C drive and it could tell me what shows were out there.. but trying to play live video or a recording meant accessing the D drive and that failed. It showed as “connection” error.. which, it turned out, was misleading.

Using the self-test inside channels everything looked great except for a red flag for recording to the D drive. I checked teh properties of the folder on the D drive.. it showed as read-only (which I figured, change that and we’re good.. but the recursion of files and folders turned up missing file after missing file. Saw a suggestion to reboot to bios and check the drive status there before continuing.

BIOS no longer sees the D drive.

So.. either the shelled-“990pro with heatsink” (that’s how the BIOS had shown it) is bad, or it really shouldn’t be used without its heatsink, or the NVME slot itself is bad. But since that slot looked fine when I set this all up, I am uncertain how to proceed.

I will try replacing 1TB SSD as the D: drive (one of the 1TB SSDs that came with the SER9) but it took days for this failure to show up. I could have Channels recording to it. I have another non-heatsink 4TB SSD on the way (this is getting expensive) but testing that will be in the same cycle of many days of testing.

I will try the possibly-faulty SSD in an on-order external enclosure or try to find a PC here that has an empty NVME slot to try it with .. and hopefully one where the Samsung heatsink can be put back on for the test.

Supposedly, removing the heatsink voided my warranty, but I cannot imagine that the heatsink 990pro is any different internally than the non-heatsink version. And yet, BOIS knew I was using a heatsink stick.. so I have no idea.

Does anyone have any advice for me? I’d love to be able to tell what was faulty.. the SER9 or the NVME stick.

thorpemark

update: after cold shutdown and some time.. just rebooted to bios and now it sees the 2nd nvme drive. while still in bios I am running all the self tests.. the short ones passed and the long version running now.

thorpemark

Last update (I hope).. I grok’d a few questions and I got it to suggest something interesting… that is in the Power Plan settings.. advanced settings.. it showed setting for turning off hard drives (set to 0 or NEVER) and under PCI Express there is Link State Power management and you set that to OFF.

This second part was interesting because the symptoms it suggested was exactly what my problem was. My OS NVME drive was functioning perfectly.. but I only used the 2nd drive, the D: drive, so far for DVR recordinings… and after several days of no recordings.. somewhere in there it it turned off for power savings and did not come back on. So, the settings above should solve that… but when will I know for sure? In a few days maybe. Anyway, I was able to cancel my 4TB 990pro non-heatsink replacement so I hope this is it.

Guess I have to come back when I know. Maybe someone else will encounter the same issue and this could help them not jump off a cliff.

support6

thorpemark
Great detective work! The PCIe Link State Power Management setting is a sneaky culprit here—NVMe drives (especially secondary ones) can sometimes get “stuck” in low-power states if the system aggressively manages power, leading to them dropping off the bus entirely.
Your fix makes total sense: Disabling that setting prevents the PCIe link from entering low-power modes that might confuse the drive, and setting “turn off hard drives” to “never” ensures the OS doesn’t treat the NVMe like a traditional HDD that can be idled.
To confirm it’s resolved, keep an eye on the drive over the next few days—if it stays detected in BIOS/OS and Channels DVR records/plays back without issues, you’ve nailed it. If it fails again, you can circle back to testing the drive in another system or enclosure, but this power tweak feels like the right call given the symptoms.
Fingers crossed this is the end of it—let us know how it holds up!

thorpemark

Well.. the OS changes may have helped.. but I had to get into BIOS as well. If it works this time I’ll review the BIOS settings I changed and post.'

Yes.. this means the D: drive access disappeared again in exactly the same way. Since computers was on, the software thought the D drive was there.. its info on stored recordings was on C: but pointed to D:. And live viewing would want to buffer to D: (I assume) because that failed as well. And, like last time, warm restart to BIOS saw BIOS not see the 2nd NVME drive, only listing the 1st OS drive. But a cold reboot afterward returned both NVME drives to be seen by the BIOS. I changed 2 BIOS settings.. one in ACPI and anuother, iirc, off

Manual PPT limits set to (they started at 0.. grok suggested a non-zero value might be best and recommended teh below based on the CPU):
Fast PPT to 50000mW
Slow PPT to 35000mW
Slow PPT Time Constant to 5 seconds

also
ACPI Auto is disabled
Hibernation disabled (had been enabled)

I think that is the only 2 I changed but grok did suggest I look for any other Sleep Mode settings.., wanting me to make sure S3, S4 and S5 sleep modes are disabled and said somehting like is S3 is enabled it may trigger elevation to S4 or even S5 in some settings.

In my software tests, I recorded 4 shows at teh same time around noon and they all worked, but this was while I was setting things up with teh new BIOS settings, so it probably did not have a lot of time to fall asleep. I set up more recordings for about 4 hours from now, 7PM my time.. so sometime later tonight I will go fire up a TV app and see if it can access the new recordings.. or the old ones or live TV since they will all require access to D: drive.

I have no idea what kind of performance I can expect if someone is using the PC to browse or read emails while it is trying to record shows and someone TV in the house is playing a recording.. but I have been impressed. I was worried seeing some choppy video but that seemed to be totally related to a software setting in playback.. something about shared tuners. I really like what I have seen from the miniPC so far, so I think you have a winner here.

Also FYI… really like your BIOS.. you guys have made an effort. While I don’t have any minisforum minPCs I do have a couple of their miniITX mobos.. I am using one to type this now and another is in a Truescale NAS (which I may try to get running ChannelsDVR but it is mostly for personal photo and video backup. Their BIOS is weak sauce. Example: Samsung Magician wanted to update FIRMWARE for the NVME drives I have in this one and I couldn’t do it. Some trusted computing settings were involved where I had to do a round-about update through booting a USB stick.. that is normally somehting to update a mobo BIOS.. not a memory stick or hard drive FIRMWARE. And minisforum was no help. It seems like minimal effort is put in to their bios so that is why I decided beelink was worth a shot and I have to say it has worked out so far.