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The problem:

So something really weird is going on with my Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD. Opening the drive and ensuring hidden files are shown, it's empty:

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but looking in the properties panel it's also not:

drive properties

So time to try all tools available to figure this out, starting with the basics:

Debugging steps so far:

1. Disk Cleanup

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Nothing to gain.

2. Optimize and Defragment

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It was worth a shot but no dice.

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3. Error Checking

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Hmm, that's a lot of scanning for a drive you're so sure is empty Windows...

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Nothing to see here.

4. Format Drive

If all else fails, let's just format the dang thing... Right?

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Wrong.

5. Samsung Magician

Alright no luck yet, but it's a Samsung drive, so surely if anything can figure this out it'd be a Samsung drive management tool.

enter image description here

enter image description here

Alrighty then. Apparently Samsung doesn't fully support this product they sold me. EDIT: According to the rep, since M.2 was such a new product, the first version of the 970 EVO didn't support Diagnostic Scan, but the next gen of the same drive does support it.

6. Called Samsung

The tech noticed Disk Manager shows that the drive is listed as a pagefile. Now that I think about it, I do think I recall using some setting to let my other drives be used as page-files for memory because I was running a simulation program that needed massive memory space. But I dont recall what the setting was or where I found it

Is there anything else I can do?

openwindows
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  • This question would look a lot better if I had the rep to post it properly, sorry – openwindows Sep 23 '20 at 23:57
  • If the drive is a pagefile, you can remove it. https://www.technobezz.com/how-to-remove-pagefile-sys-in-windows-10/ If this fails, I would (carefully) boot up a Linux distro and repartition/reformat the disk outside Windows. – davidgo Sep 24 '20 at 00:40
  • @davidgo beat ya to it! See my answer – openwindows Sep 24 '20 at 00:42

1 Answers1

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Found the issue!

I had wandered into Windows advanced system settings and found how to set pagefile allocation on other drives. It was a long time ago and I never noticed until now.

Here's a guide to do (and undo) this:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-move-virtual-memory-different-drive-windows-10

Settings > System > About > Related Settings / System Info > Advanced System Settings > Performance > Settings > Advanced

openwindows
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