Drives show in Bios but not in Windows installer or Linux Mint live

I have a computer I’m trying to install Windows 10 on. The windows installer doesn’t see the drive (Skhynix m.2) and neither does Linux Mint. I can see the drive in Bios. I tried 2 other drives (cabled sata drives) and the same issue occurs. I’m not sure what my next step is to troubleshoot this issue?

4th gen i5
MSI Sli z97s krait edition
XPG memory
Sk Hynix 6HG72 M.2 drive

If you need more info let me know.

If you have it in Intel RAID mode, it will hide the drives from the standard drivers. Both Windows and Linux need special help to access the drive.

As far as I know, that’s mostly for Windows in order to avoid the default NVMe driver which has some issues I guess. For Linux you shouldn’t need it. See if your BIOS has a way to turn off RAID, if that is in fact the problem.

Or for a Windows install look for the Intel RAID drivers and load them during the installer start.

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I just did some google searching and that board does not appear to have a RAID issue but it does require the latest BIOS that MSI issued for that board. It was manufactured before NVMe was a thing.

Although, the drive should be visible to an operating system, like a Linux live CD. Even if the BIOS does not understand how to read from it, it should be a standard PCIe device once the system is booted.

Also, you need to give more detail about what you meant by

You tried using them for what?

Also check your motherboard manual for details on that M.2 slot. Some of those boards disable things like half your SATA ports because they have limited PCIe lanes available.

I tried two different cabled SATA drives to see if I could see them at OS install. These cabled drives also show up in the bios but do not show up during the Windows installation. I fired up Linux Mint live from a USB and cannot see any of the drives when I try to install Linux Mint.

I do have the drives in SATA ports 1 and 2.

I did update the bios to the latest version but still have the issue.

Have you tried just having one drive connected when trying to install the OS. Just unplug/remove any that you don’t want to be the drive the OS on.

If that works you can reconnect them after you have it installed and should be able to set them up for storage.

Yes that’s what I tried first. I can’t get any of the drives to show up at Windows installation even when they are the only drive connected. Yet they show up in the bios.

Can you boot into a live mint environment and see them in something like gparted?

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I just tried Linux Mint live gparted with only the M.2 drive, then a cabled SATA drive, and lastly all the drives connected. None of them ever showed up. All three times I can see the drives at boot and in bios though.

Out of curiosity I put together another computer with the same motherboard and CPU and could see the drive in Linux Mint live.

Try clearing that System partition on the drive. Maybe the installer sees it and thinks that an operating system is already there. Also try a different usb drive or reimage the USB with a redownloaded ISO. That’s all I can think of to try now.

Have you tried booting your Live-USB in UEFI mode?
How about turning off secure boot?

Reading from the manual please check your bios is set to AHCI mode - refer page 3-9 for more details.

[AHCI Mode] Specify the AHCI mode for SATA storage devices. AHCI (Advanced
Host Controller Interface) offers some advanced features to enhance
the speed and performance of SATA storage device, such as Native
Command Queuing (NCQ) and hot-plugging.

Also I noticed this line in the manual: The SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a module in the
M.2 port (reference 1-20), good to know that you shouldn’t plug hard drives in those ports with a M.2 in place.

Another is show us fdisk -l from the linux mint.

I came across this thread it could help you out.

A bit of a head-scratcher. Tonight I went back to the workshop and booted into the Windows installer and the drive showed up. Installed fine and seems to be running great. I’d love to know why it wasn’t working in the first place, but I doubt I’ll ever figure it out. :thinking:

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