I'm building a new AMD-based PC and trying to perform a fresh Windows 11 installation. The BIOS detects both NVMe SSDs, including the 1 TB drive I want to use for Windows, but the installer only shows it as unallocated space. I tried loading AMD RAID drivers, which caused the SSDs to disappear from the installer, and I also tried using Command Prompt to clean the disk, but the drive did not appear there. I want Windows on the 1 TB SSD and plan to use the 2 TB SSD for games and video editing. What's the correct way to proceed?
3 Answers
Temporarily disconnect the 2 TB NVMe drive and install Windows with only the 1 TB SSD connected. This prevents the installer from putting boot files on the wrong drive. After Windows is working, reconnect the second SSD and initialize or format it in Disk Management for your games and editing files.
After changing the storage mode, restart the installer from the beginning and check whether the 1 TB SSD appears normally. If it still doesn’t, recreate the Windows installer USB and try another motherboard USB port, preferably a rear USB port. Also confirm that the installer is booted as UEFI rather than legacy BIOS mode.
If the drive is missing from DiskPart, check the motherboard storage settings. For a normal single-drive installation, disable AMD RAID mode if you aren’t using a RAID array, then boot the installer in UEFI mode. You generally should not load RAID drivers unless RAID is actually enabled. If you do need to erase the drive, press Shift+F10, run diskpart, then use list disk, select the correct disk by its size, clean, convert gpt, and exit. Be extremely careful because clean erases the selected drive; verify the disk number first.
I disconnected the other drive, but the installer still wouldn’t let me continue.