Xiaomi Laptop not detecting SSDs anymore
Good day folks. A colleague of mine asked me to take a look at his new laptop which he somehow managed to f-up right out of the box 
It's not very clear to me what exactly he did to it, but the end result is that it's no longer detecting the M.2 SSD, thus no longer booting, essentially making it a pretty expensive brick since it's useless without this single means of storage (no SATA on this thing). What he tried to do was swap the SSD from his old laptop into this one....sounds like a simple enough operation. He said it took a bit of force to jam his SSD into the Xiaomi, though I'm not sure exactly what "a bit" means to him. A careful look at the connector shows there is actually no damage to the plastic or the pins, so maybe he's referring to the springiness these slots tend to have, which require pushing the board down before fastening it with the screw....not sure.
Regardless, it's worth mentioning he got the keying right, since I was afraid right off the bat he may have tried jamming an M-keyed SSD into a B-keyed slot, which could damage something, but that's not the case: both boards are B+M keyed and he claims he maintained the orientation of the drive as he pulled it out of his old laptop. Moreover, the SSD that was originally in the Xiaomi works on his Asus laptop just fine, so the drives themselves are fine - it's the Xiaomi laptop that got busted somehow. I also noticed it is entirely possible, with no effort at all even, to plug the drive in upside-down, despite him claiming he didn't do it....I'm not sure if that's allowed to happen or if it damages anything...it could very well do so....
The only measurement I could take, since it's really obvious, is on that cap right next to the slot. It reads around 1.2v without the drive in and around 0.2v with the drive....I'm not liking this. Something's definitely not right. He didn't unplug the battery when attempting this swap, so maybe that had something to do with it as well. I could not identify where that power trace leads, so I don't know what lies downstream - I'm expecting a transistor which tells switches on/off power to that sub-rail (something like 3.3v_SSD, derived from the main 3.3v rail). No short on this cap......what do you guys thing ? I'm not sure if I should expect to see 3.3v on that cap without the drive actually installed. This could also mean the laptop is not detecting the drive to command the power rail to come on, despite the power circuit for the drive actually being fine. If that's the case, I'm afraid it might be game over, as a reminder that it's best to leave stuff like this to someone who's a bit more experienced than you
It's not very clear to me what exactly he did to it, but the end result is that it's no longer detecting the M.2 SSD, thus no longer booting, essentially making it a pretty expensive brick since it's useless without this single means of storage (no SATA on this thing). What he tried to do was swap the SSD from his old laptop into this one....sounds like a simple enough operation. He said it took a bit of force to jam his SSD into the Xiaomi, though I'm not sure exactly what "a bit" means to him. A careful look at the connector shows there is actually no damage to the plastic or the pins, so maybe he's referring to the springiness these slots tend to have, which require pushing the board down before fastening it with the screw....not sure.
Regardless, it's worth mentioning he got the keying right, since I was afraid right off the bat he may have tried jamming an M-keyed SSD into a B-keyed slot, which could damage something, but that's not the case: both boards are B+M keyed and he claims he maintained the orientation of the drive as he pulled it out of his old laptop. Moreover, the SSD that was originally in the Xiaomi works on his Asus laptop just fine, so the drives themselves are fine - it's the Xiaomi laptop that got busted somehow. I also noticed it is entirely possible, with no effort at all even, to plug the drive in upside-down, despite him claiming he didn't do it....I'm not sure if that's allowed to happen or if it damages anything...it could very well do so....
The only measurement I could take, since it's really obvious, is on that cap right next to the slot. It reads around 1.2v without the drive in and around 0.2v with the drive....I'm not liking this. Something's definitely not right. He didn't unplug the battery when attempting this swap, so maybe that had something to do with it as well. I could not identify where that power trace leads, so I don't know what lies downstream - I'm expecting a transistor which tells switches on/off power to that sub-rail (something like 3.3v_SSD, derived from the main 3.3v rail). No short on this cap......what do you guys thing ? I'm not sure if I should expect to see 3.3v on that cap without the drive actually installed. This could also mean the laptop is not detecting the drive to command the power rail to come on, despite the power circuit for the drive actually being fine. If that's the case, I'm afraid it might be game over, as a reminder that it's best to leave stuff like this to someone who's a bit more experienced than you
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