Clean install on new ssd on new laptop - Windows 11 can't find drive

john9999 · Monday at 2:40 PM

I have a new Dell XPS 15 9530 laptop that came with a 500gb ssd & 16 gb RAM & Windows 11 Pro. It works fine with this setup. I installed a Samsung 990 Pro 2tb ssd and 64gb of RAM & tried to install Windows. I have a Windows 11 USB drive & a Windows 11 iso image USB drive that I made yesterday from the MS website and Rufus. On the first try, I just replaced ssds and tried to install. That used to work on prior Windows versions, but not any more.

I found a MS post advising to download Intel drivers onto a USB drive and another advising to initialize, partition & format the drive in Device Management. Accordingly, I did all of the above, creating one partition. I also downloaded Samsung Magician to make sure that the drive has the latest firmware. Then I swapped ssds and tried again. (There is only one ssd in the laptop at any time.)

The first VMD driver works, and the box now shows 2 partitions, 15mb & 1863mb primary. I selected the primary partition and clicked on next and got the response "We couldn't create a new partition or locate an existing one. For more information, see the setup log", which I can't see without switching ssds.

The same thing happens with both VMD drivers. The only other driver doesn't work at all.

A clean install of windows used to be easy but this has be baffled. What should I try?

SlicEnDicE · Monday at 2:55 PM

Did you follow this guide to the point?
How To Load The Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver To Install An Operating System On An NVMe Storage Drive

andrew129260 · Monday at 3:04 PM

SlicEnDicE said:
Did you follow this guide to the point?
How To Load The Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver To Install An Operating System On An NVMe Storage Drive

yup, either load the drivers or do what I do and just turn off Raid and set it to ahci in the bios. Then you never have to deal with that mess again. Dell loves to set their bios to raid for some reason.

People say there is a performance benefit, but I have never really came across that.

markw51 · Monday at 3:35 PM

andrew129260 said:
yup, either load the drivers or do what I do and just turn off Raid and set it to ahci in the bios. Then you never have to deal with that mess again. Dell loves to set their bios to raid for some reason.

People say there is a performance benefit, but I have never really came across that.

Not all Dell bios's have the option to switch from RAID to AHCI. My Inspiron only gained the facility a short while ago with a recent bios update.

andrew129260 · Monday at 3:41 PM

markw51 said:
Not all Dell bios's have the option to switch from RAID to AHCI. My Inspiron only gained the facility a short while ago with a recent bios update.

Huh really? Interesting. I guess I just been lucky then. So far every model I touched had that option

john9999 · Monday at 3:44 PM

Thanks for then quick replies. I switched from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS, but now no drivers show up when I try to select the driver to install. The directories are all shown, just no drivers.

SIW2 · Monday at 3:45 PM

Did you try deleting the partitions and see if it will install to a blank disk

Or create esp and windows partitions first, then use the apply method instead of setup.exe

andrew129260 · Monday at 3:45 PM

john9999 said:
Thanks for then quick replies. I switched from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS, but now no drivers show up when I try to select the driver to install. The directories are all shown, just no drivers.

you shouldn't need drivers if you switched to AHCI. Just wipe the disk and install.

john9999 · Monday at 3:57 PM

Thanks for the help. I deleted the partitions, and windows is now installing. This was my first encounter with RAID, and it was unexpected. As you say, it's an odd choice by Dell to set as the default in laptops.

markw51 · 2024-07-02T08:11:42-0400

john9999 said:
Thanks for then quick replies. I switched from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS, but now no drivers show up when I try to select the driver to install. The directories are all shown, just no drivers.

If you've selected AHCI you won't need to specify drivers as Windows will install them automatically.

Scott · 2024-07-02T14:58:11-0400

john9999 said:
This was my first encounter with RAID, and it was unexpected. As you say, it's an odd choice by Dell to set as the default in laptops.

Not just Dell's, The latest BIOS for my ASUS motherboard set RAID by default. In the newer firmware its known as
VMD (Volume Management Device). Although it doesn't say so, disabling the VMD controller sets the system to AHCI mode.

andrew129260 · 2024-07-02T14:59:13-0400

Scott said:
Not just Dell's, The latest BIOS for my ASUS motherboard set RAID by default. In the newer firmware its known as
VMD (Volume Management Device). Although it doesn't say so, disabling the VMD controller sets the system to AHCI mode.

View attachment 100498

huh.....interesting.