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Samsung 990 Pro Appears in BIOS but Not in the Windows 11 Installer

September 8, 2026 3 answers
Asked by MellowQuasar42
I'm trying to install Windows 11 on a new Samsung 990 Pro NVMe drive. My system has an MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX motherboard, an AMD CPU, and the SSD is installed in the primary M.2 slot. The drive appears normally in BIOS, but the Windows installer shows no available disk. DiskPart's list disk and rescan commands also fail to detect it. SATA mode is set to AHCI, RAID is disabled, and I recreated the Windows installer USB with a freshly downloaded ISO. CSM is disabled and the system is set to UEFI mode. What could make the BIOS recognize the NVMe while Windows Setup cannot?
B450 motherboard BIOS Hardware NVME SSD Samsung 990 Pro storage troubleshooting Windows 11 installer

Answers

NoraPine88
Make sure the firmware is actually booting the installer in UEFI mode with CSM disabled. Windows 11 expects UEFI, and legacy/CSM settings can sometimes prevent the storage device from appearing correctly during setup.

MellowQuasar42: The BIOS is set to UEFI rather than CSM, so that part appears to be configured correctly.

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CopperLynx7
First update the motherboard BIOS. A build from 2023 is several versions behind, and newer NVMe drives can sometimes behave better after firmware updates. It may not solve the problem by itself, but it’s a sensible step before troubleshooting further.

MellowQuasar42: I updated the board to the newest available 2026 BIOS, but Windows Setup still doesn’t detect the drive.

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PixelHarbor31
The installer may be missing the storage controller driver. Check the motherboard’s support page for an AMD RAID or storage driver and extract it before loading it through the “Load driver” option on the disk-selection screen. Don’t leave it as a ZIP file—the installer needs the extracted folder containing the driver files. If the controller is truly set to AHCI with RAID disabled, you normally shouldn’t need an AMD RAID driver, so also verify that the BIOS storage mode wasn’t changed accidentally.

MellowQuasar42: I found an AMD RAID driver package. I’ll extract it and try loading the driver during setup, while double-checking that RAID is still disabled.

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