Hello!
I’m trying to get the setup in subject to work. Apart from the SSD I have RAID1 of two HDDs with Windows 7 installed. The problem is that I don’t know how to make the NVMe SSD visible in BIOS. It is listed in the RST setup as a non-RAID drive (I can see info, but nothing to tune), but not in the NVMe configuration section. Windows also doesn’t see it.
Does the motherboard allow to have an NVMe drive along with SATA RAID? Any way to make it work?
No, any NVMe drive is a storage device present in the OS, only will not appear in File Explorer if not initialized (Brand new) with a proper system file and a partition and of course if not part of a RAID volume
in ur case it is not the situation.
And yes any drive or NVMe can be present along a RAID system…again as bootable or storage drive.
In the bios it may not be visible as its controlled by the AHCI, as ur motherboard is with RAID controller enable, so iRST will be used instead of the AHCI Standard.
Windows 7 must be fully updated (KB2990941) to support NVMe drives and if necessary the Intel NVMe driver here, point E (B): Recommended AHCI/RAID and NVMe Drivers
I do believe u want to maintain the RAID volume and current boot system and add the NVMe drive as storage, correct?
I am probably missing something. I can’t install any drivers as the drive is not visible neither in the device manager nor in the disk management tool in Windows. If it matters I’ve installed RST tool and drivers (v 14, without Optane support) to control my RAID.
Yes.
Thats a bit odd even with RAID enable…
Disconnect ur RAID volume, u dont want to wreck him.
U can do a simple test, change the iRST from RAID back to AHCI save and reboot, the NVMe should now be visible in bios.
This just to see if the NVMe drive is alive and well connected.
Ok, I’ll try it. If I got it right I shall switch "SATA Mode Selection" from "Intel RST Premium" to "AHCI", HDDs being disconnected.
Yes… u need to know if the drive is well seated and alive, then u revert back to RAID mode to use the system again as it was.
But i do believe that even so the NVMe drive should be visible in the iRST as non-RAID drive, with ur old settings, thats why need to know if theres a HW problem
If I disconnect my HDDs and switch to AHCI, will my RAID settings erase from BIOS? Is anything I shall pay attention to so that I can re-enable RAID without HDDs being cleared in process? Sorry, not very good at these things.
Nothing will be modified on the RAID volume if disconnected.
Bios changes, nothing more that iRST and boot device priority…but in ur case its only the RAID volume the only bootable.
If ur not confident dont engage, u need to check only is the NVMe drive is Ok in another system or if it was badly seated in the Z270 or if the M.2 slot has any problem.
This is because u dont see the drive in bios or in the device manager, so u need to know where the problem is.
Good luck.
Tried to switch to AHCI and nothing changed. I also started Ubuntu from USB drive and it didn’t see the SSD either.
So wot does that tell u…? Or u can test the drive in another system/motherboard or u wont ever know if its alive, right?
The Z270 supports native PCIe M.2 SATA AHCI or NVME.
No more miracles here m8…good luck.
I made a Windows 10 setup USB, disconnected my HDDs (but left iRST in the RAID mode) and Windows 10 was able to detect my NVMe drive and install itself. And it even loads and works. Before that Debian installer failed to detect the SSD.
The SSD is still not visible if I boot into Linux.
Any ideas on what magic Windows 10 has that nobody else has?
So before the NVMe was not detected in RAID mode… now is? Wot was the problem then?
Dont know wots the problem with Debian/Linux…not my area, motherboard loads the NVMe DXE EFI driver from bios, Windows setup upon destination drive loads known driver storage controllers and it lists the devices available, thats it.
Before it the NVMe was not detected because I didn’t try Windows 10.
Ok. I sorted this out and now have my drive in Windows 7.
- Gigabyte support replied that an NVMe drive may not appear in the NVMe configuration section of BIOS. So this should not be used for diagnosis.
- Linux doesn’t like iRST RAID. On one forum they say that iRST RAID is a software RAID built in BIOS and Linux doesn’t need it. Debian 11 setup does see NVMe disk if iRST switched to AHCI mode. So, Linux also should not be used for diagnosis if you are going to use iRST RAID.
- Finally, how I solved the problem. Just of curiosity I clicked on Device Manager->Storage controllers->Intel SATA/…<something> -> Update drivers (this is backward translation to English, sorry, I’m using a localized Windows). And it indeed found a better driver: Intel(R) Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller. Probably the "PCIe" and "RST Premium" are the things that were missing.
Windows gave me no clue at all that I need to change the driver.
Anyway, thanks to all who helped me with the issue.
P.S. In the meanwhile I installed Windows Native NVMe support drivers (two KB…). I had to download them from some private mirror as Microsoft removed them from its website. I don’t know if these drivers are actually working in my system.