[SOLVED] m.2 drive not detected in BIOS, except in RAID manager

[capt_taco]

Motherboard is an Asus Z170-P D3, drive is ADATA Swordfish 2 TB 2280. Current main/boot drive is a 500 GB Samsung EVO that I am looking to make the secondary, and install Windows on m.2 as the primary.

I installed the m.2 drive, but it does not show up anywhere on the list of detected drives or bootable devices in the BIOS (it actually says "m.2 slot: Empty").

However, if I go to the RAID setup menu, there it is, the only one in the list of PCIE devices. However, the only options there are Back and Cancel.

SSD is on SATA5 and a DVD-RW drive is on SATA6. I did have a third HDD connected to SATA3, but I removed that and the same problem persists. M.2 drive is not detectable in Windows 10 device manager either.

In the motherboard manual, it contains the line, "When using Intel Desktop Responsiveness technologies with PCIe/SATA m.2 device, ensure to set up the Windows UEFI operating system under RAID mode." Not sure what to make of this, except that the device shows up in RAID setup wizard and nowhere else.

Is there something obvious that I am missing here? I have installed a number of m.2 devices before and never experienced anything remotely like this.

 

[Karadjgne]

Don't bother with the Rapid start stuff, not worth it with nvme drives, it's mainly a hybrid hibernation useful if you have hdds. The main advantage to using the raid drivers is they include nvme support, which isn't native on the older chipsets.

To get my Adata noticed, I had to pull power, reset cmos and cold boot. Remove All other drive data connections first. That got it recognised in bios.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/cant-install-windows-10-on-m-2.3082008/post-19208033

 

[capt_taco]

Don't bother with the Rapid start stuff, not worth it with nvme drives, it's mainly a hybrid hibernation useful if you have hdds. The main advantage to using the raid drivers is they include nvme support, which isn't native on the older chipsets.

To get my Adata noticed, I had to pull power, reset cmos and cold boot. Remove All other drive data connections first. That got it recognised in bios.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/cant-install-windows-10-on-m-2.3082008/post-19208033

All right, I'll give that a shot. Seems like a lot of trouble for installing a drive, but I guess it's just one of those weird quirks with certain hardware. Wish me luck!

update: Yup, clearing the CMOS finally got it to detect the drive. Nice of them to put the battery right next to the main PCIE x16 slot so I had to remove the video card to get to it, lol. But at least I got there. Thanks!

 

[Karadjgne]

You know there's a couple of cmos reset pins, just need to short those for 10 se onds with a butter knife or flat head screwdriver. Some boards also include a reset cmos button. 🤣