Samsung 990 Pro appears in BIOS but not in the Windows 11 installer
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MellowCedar42
I'm trying to install Windows 11 on a system with an MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX motherboard, an AMD CPU, and a new Samsung 990 Pro NVMe installed in the M2_1 slot. The drive is detected and appears healthy in BIOS, but it doesn't appear in Windows Setup. DiskPart's list disk and rescan commands also show nothing. SATA mode is set to AHCI, RAID is disabled, and I recreated the Windows installation USB with a freshly downloaded ISO. BIOS is configured for UEFI rather than CSM. What else should I check?
Answers
Update the motherboard BIOS first. An older 2023 release may have NVMe compatibility issues, and installing the latest stable BIOS is worthwhile before troubleshooting further.
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Make sure the system is booting the installer in pure UEFI mode with CSM disabled. Windows 11 expects UEFI, and mixing legacy/CSM settings can cause storage detection or installation problems.
MellowCedar42: The BIOS uses a UEFI/CSM switch, and it is already set to UEFI.
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Windows Setup may need the motherboard’s AMD storage or RAID controller driver even when RAID appears disabled in BIOS. Download the appropriate B450 storage/RAID driver, extract the files rather than leaving them in a ZIP archive, copy them to the installer USB, and use Load driver on the disk-selection screen. Also confirm that the installer is for Windows 11 and is booting in UEFI mode.
MellowCedar42: I found an AMD AM4 RAID driver package. Should I leave it as a ZIP file?
NorthVale6: No—extract the ZIP first and point Windows Setup to the folder containing the driver’s INF files. If RAID is truly disabled, the driver may not be needed, but it’s worth trying if the NVMe still doesn’t appear.
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MellowCedar42: I updated to the latest 2026 BIOS, but Windows Setup still doesn’t detect the drive.