Enabling Samsung 960 Pro without disabling 850 Pro possible?

[Skalbe]

Hi!
I built a PC with one of them new M.2 SSDs and I did do my homework about compatibility and all, but this chinglish BIOS is giving me a heck of a time and I don`t understand how I can enable my Samsung 960 Pro without disabling or formatting my Samsung 850 Pro.

1) The 960 is in the M.2_1 slot which disables the first two SATA slots on my mobo.
2) My two 850 are in slots 3 and 4.
3) I can switch between Optane(RAID)/AHCI modes in bios and the 960 gets recognized as present when the Optane mode is on, but the "Create a RAID drive" is greyed out for that drive while it offers to RAID my two 850s.
4) But it wont boot from 850 when in Optane mode.
5) When I turn on the Intel Rapid Storage Technology in BIOS, the internal storage interface automatically switches to Optane and if I switch it manually to AHCI, it switches back after restart anyway. I can only switch back to AHCI if I turn off the RST.
6) I want to make the 960 my main system drive and I understand it needs the RST enabled.

Do I HAVE to RAID format a drive for it to work in Optane mode?
Can I make the 960 work while in AHCI mode?
How do I make them compatible?

Hardware in question:
MSI SLI Plus z270 motherboard.
I7-7700k CPU
Samsung 960 pro 512gb ssd
Samsung 850 pro 256gb ssd (x2)

Thank you very much.

 

[Skalbe]

I guess I just needed someone who`d listen as I understood my issue more clearly after explaining it.
Obviously you should be able to just run the M.2 drive as is. My BIOS did see both the 960 and the 850s in AHCI mode without RST enabled. It was my old Windows 7 that didn`t.
Solved after installing NVMe driver from Samsung.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Thanks for the update, & welcome to THF -