[SOLVED] M.2 drive somewhat detected by BIOS but not device/drive manager

[CharliePC]

Hello, I've recently installed a second SSD, an M.2 drive, into my newly upgraded PC. for those wondering the relevant specs are:

Motherboard - Asus ROG Strix X570-E
SSD - addlink s70 (1TB)
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

The new drive appears under "storage devices" in the BIOS' EZ mode as well as in the advanced menu under "NMWe Configuration". However, this drive cannot be found in the dropdown menus for either "HDD/SDD SMART Information" or any places where boot devices can be selected. Similarly, this new drive is absent from both Windows 10's Device Manger and Drive Management windows. refreshing/rescanning does nothing.

I have tried updating my BIOS and fiddling around with some settings. Near every other online solution involved changing bios settings which seem to just not exist for my motherboard. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dwd999]

My personal standard advice: since you need to figure out if this is strictly a hardware issue or a windows related issue, download a Linux live iso image (I prefer Linux Mint Mate) and burn it to a usb. Then try booting the usb and see if the ssd is recognized. Sometimes you just have to get away from windows to diagnose a problem. Then use the gparted app to remove any partitions on the ssd (which should be blank) and create a new one making sure the ssd is marked as a gpt device. You also should view the settings for your older drive and see if its set up as a gpt or mbr device. If its marked mbr that might be a source of conflict with your new ssd. Since changing an mbr device to gpt can result in a total loss of your old drive's files, you may not want to try that. There is a mbrtogpt utility but that should only be used as a last resort.

 

[CharliePC]

The new drive was indeed selectable in Linux Mint Mate's drive manager. I went into gparted, selected the drive (which had no existing partitions) and created a partition table, during which I set a dropdown menu to gpt. Lastly, I created a new partition using the default settings and clicked "apply all operations".

Once I restarted back into windows, I found that there was no change. the driver was still missing from those fields in BIOS and in disk management. Thankfully, my older drive (a Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB) is marked GPT, so at least we can check that off.

 

[CharliePC]

Fixed! Turns out I had to uninstall "AMD Raid bottom device". Doing this made windows detect the new SSD for me to format. Thanks for the advice, knowing it was a windows problem led me to searching the solution!