Question P2 Crucial NVMe shows up in bios, but not windows

[JoshSchreder]

Recently picked up an NVMe for extra storage. I have my SN850 in m.2_1 and to avoid removing my video card I put the Crucial P2 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD Up to 2400MB/s - CT1000P2SSD8 in m.2_3. When I boot up the computer both drives show up in bios. However when windows loads I can only see the SN_850. It does not show up in device manager or disk management. Searched around the forum and couldn't find anything super useful.


ASUS Prime Z690-P D4
i5-12600k
WD_BLACK 1TB SN850 NVMe
ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6
Corsair RMX Series, RM750x

 

[SparkyTech934]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! Hopefully I can help you out with the issue you're having with the SSD.

I took a look at the manual for your motherboard, and it looks like the m.2_3 slot is processed through the chipset. I have a few questions and suggestions to help you out here:

1. In the BIOS, what mode are the storage drives set to? options are normally AHCI, RAID, etc. Or look for an option for Intel Rapid Storage technology (ON or OFF)
2. Do you have all the drivers installed for the motherboard (from Windows update, or from the Asus website)?
3. Are you able to use a third party tool to check to see if the drive is recognized? I recommend HWiNFO, it is by far the best all-in-one hardware monitor/info software. A link to the download page is here

I suspect that the issue has something to do with what mode the drives are in, and a missing driver in Windows. Normally if the BIOS is set to use RAID mode for the drives, it won't recognize the ones through the chipset if the driver is not loaded in Windows.

 

[JoshSchreder]

So I have tried turning the Intel Rapid Storage Technology on & off and that did not make a difference. Everything is up-to-date w/ Windows Update. When I put the machine together back in March of 2022 all of the drivers for the MB were installed, but I can double check to see if any new stuff has been released. I'll try the third party tool when I get home. Thank you!

 

[SparkyTech934]

Thanks for the additional information! Keep me posted on what HWiNFO says.

In the meantime, I also wanted to get some more information on some things from your original post. What did you mean that it doesn't show up in device manager or disk management? In the disk management GUI, does it not have a 'Disk #' with a black bar indicating that there is no partition table or data on it?

I'd recommend reinstalling the Intel RST driver specifically (Asus driver page here). It's the one under SATA, called the 'Intel RST VMD driver V19.5.0.1037 For Windows 10/11 64-bit.' We're specifically after the VMD driver because it is not able to be recognized by Windows with basic Microsoft drivers. For an example related to this, on my work laptop, when I reinstall windows on it, I have to load the driver manually during the install process, since the NVMe SSD cannot be recognized in the preinstallation media without it. It's the same principle when you make it into Windows.

I hope this helps explain it a bit more. Keep me posted, and best of luck!

 

[JoshSchreder]

So I installed the drivers and noticed the Intel RST was turned on in the bios. After turning that off I blue screen came up Inaccessible Boot Device. Went back into the bios and turned RST back on. Loaded up HWiNFO64 and it does see my second NVMe. The only difference is under capabilities and the Compare Command is red saying 'not supported'

 

[SparkyTech934]

Okay, perfect! So the fact that HWiNFO sees both SSDs should be a good sign!

I'd like to see if we can manually partition and format the drive using diskpart, which is a command line tool built into Windows. Below are the instructions on how to format the drive, if Windows can identify it.

While in a newly opened terminal window (either command prompt, or powershell, opened as administrator), type in the following commands (commands in italics):

1. diskpart
   1. This will launch diskpart from within the command line windows. Wait for the terminal to launch the program with a blinking cursor
2. list disk
   1. Lists the drives in the computer. Identify your SSD based off of capacity
3. select disk X
   1. WHERE X is a number from the list above.
   2. example: select disk 3 (that would select disk 3)
4. detail disk
   1. This will show you everything you need to know about the disk/drive that you just selected. Make sure the name that it reports is something like 'Crucial P2'.
   2. If the disk you selected in step 3 is incorrect, select a different disk and detail disk until you have the right one.
5. clean
   1. Execute this to completely wipe the partition table from the SSD. If you want to really clean it, execute clean all instead, but this will take much longer. (Writes all zeros to the drive, not recommended for SSDs)
6. convert GPT
7. create partition primary
8. format fs=NTFS quick
9. assign letter=X
   1. Where X is whatever free driver letter you want to assign! (usually D or E, something like that)

I hope this helps! This is a way around using disk management. Diskpart is basically the CLI version of the Windows disk management tool. Let me know if you're able to find the Crucial P2 using the list disk command, and if you are, let me know if you get it to work! Best of luck!

 

[blahdot3h]

Okay, perfect! So the fact that HWiNFO sees both SSDs should be a good sign!

I'd like to see if we can manually partition and format the drive using diskpart, which is a command line tool built into Windows. Below are the instructions on how to format the drive, if Windows can identify it.

While in a newly opened terminal window (either command prompt, or powershell, opened as administrator), type in the following commands (commands in italics):

1. diskpart
   1. This will launch diskpart from within the command line windows. Wait for the terminal to launch the program with a blinking cursor
2. list disk
   1. Lists the drives in the computer. Identify your SSD based off of capacity
3. select disk X
   1. WHERE X is a number from the list above.
   2. example: select disk 3 (that would select disk 3)
4. detail disk
   1. This will show you everything you need to know about the disk/drive that you just selected. Make sure the name that it reports is something like 'Crucial P2'.
   2. If the disk you selected in step 3 is incorrect, select a different disk and detail disk until you have the right one.
5. clean
   1. Execute this to completely wipe the partition table from the SSD. If you want to really clean it, execute clean all instead, but this will take much longer. (Writes all zeros to the drive, not recommended for SSDs)
6. convert GPT
7. create partition primary
8. format fs=NTFS quick
9. assign letter=X
   1. Where X is whatever free driver letter you want to assign! (usually D or E, something like that)

I hope this helps! This is a way around using disk management. Diskpart is basically the CLI version of the Windows disk management tool. Let me know if you're able to find the Crucial P2 using the list disk command, and if you are, let me know if you get it to work! Best of luck!

This worked for me after trying a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks!