# NVMe SSD Not Showing Up In Windows on AMD System



## newtekie1 (Mar 3, 2020)

This all relates to my previous thread on my struggles with running RAID on AMD here.

This is on my AMD Rig4 in my signature, but I'll give a brief rundown on system specs just in case my signature or the rig changes in the future:

Ryzen 5 2600
X470 Taichi Ultimate
16GB DDR4-2933
GTX1060
850W Corsair HX850
240GB SATA SSD - OS(Inland Professional)
1TB NVMe SSD - Cache Disk(ADATA SX8200 Pro)
HighPoint 2722 SAS RAID Controller
-5x6TB HDDs in RAID6​-6x3TB HDDs in RAID5​-2 Random HDDs running as stand alone drives​​Now, originally I had the NVMe drive and 2x120GB SSDs in RAID1 connected to the motherboard.  That experiment failed thanks to AMD not supporting TRIM when their controllers are in RAID mode, and all the drives becoming painfully slow(it came to a head when it took over an hour to install Windows 10 Updates).  Also, the Cache disk was pretty much worthless because writes directly to the RAID arrays were quicker than writes to the NVMe SSD I was using as a cache.

So, I cloned the OS from the 2x120GB SSDs over to a single 240GB SSD using Acronis True Image.  System booted just fine.  Then I went into the BIOS and switched the SATA controller from RAID to AHCI and disabled RAID mode on the NVMe(you have to do it in two different placed in the BIOS for some stupid reason).  I booted into Windows, it auto installed the AMD SATA driver and asked me to reboot, and it booted just fine.

That's when I noticed the NVMe drive wasn't showing up in Windows. Not that it wasn't showing up in This PC, it wasn't showing up anywhere.  It wasn't in Disk Management and it wasn't in Device Manager, no where in Windows.

So, things I've tried:

Uninstalled everything AMD I could find in Programs and Features and Apps.
Re-installed the standard AMD Chipset driver.
Reset the BIOS to defaults.
Flashed the latest BIOS.
Removed the Highpoint card to make sure it wasn't interfering somehow.
Changed the NVMe drive to a different NVMe slot.
Moved the NVMe drive to another computer to confirm it is working.

So now I'm stumped... Any ideas?


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## milewski1015 (Mar 3, 2020)

Reinstall Windows? Seems like you've already tried everything I would logically suggest. It doesn't show up in the BIOS?


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## Sammyfed1 (Mar 3, 2020)

Sounds like it's not showing up in BIOS.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 3, 2020)

milewski1015 said:


> Reinstall Windows?



That's what I'm trying to avoid.  This would be the second re-install thanks to this fight, because the system freaked out when I added the NVMe drive and somehow Windows was corrupted.



milewski1015 said:


> Reinstall Windows? Seems like you've already tried everything I would logically suggest. It doesn't show up in the BIOS?





Sammyfed1 said:


> Sounds like it's not showing up in BIOS.



It shows up in the BIOS normally.  It is just not in Windows.


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## TheLostSwede (Mar 3, 2020)

Did you try disabling CSM and fast boot options?
Also, can you see it in Disk Management? You might have to "enable" it there.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 3, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Did you try disabling CSM and fast boot options?



Yes.



TheLostSwede said:


> Also, can you see it in Disk Management? You might have to "enable" it there.



No, as I said in the first post, it is not in Disk Management or Device Manager.


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## nailzer (Mar 9, 2020)

If it doesn't show up in Disk Management you might want to RMA the drive.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 9, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> Yes.
> 
> 
> 
> No, as I said in the first post, it is not in Disk Management or Device Manager.


Could it be that it's a Gpt partition tied to an OS that doesn't recognize it.
I have been having similar issues after using a 8Tb externally plugged in initially to copy the old drive contents.
When internalised it wasn't recognized by the same Os that effing made it externally.
It took deleting via diskpart on another pc to fix it for me.

Gpt is a pain if used.

My phone's one more niggle from getting f'd up against a wall.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 9, 2020)

nailzer said:


> If it doesn't show up in Disk Management you might want to RMA the drive.



It shows up in the BIOS, it showed up just fine before I changed the BIOS option to disable NVMe RAID, and it shows up on every other computer I have tried it on. So I don't think it is the drive. 




theoneandonlymrk said:


> Could it be that it's a Gpt partition tied to an OS that doesn't recognize it.
> I have been having similar issues after using a 8Tb externally plugged in initially to copy the old drive contents.
> When internalised it wasn't recognized by the same Os that effing made it externally.
> It took deleting via diskpart on another pc to fix it for me.
> ...



The drive should still be listed in Disk Management, but with an unknown partition. 

Even still, it doesn't show up even in diskpart.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 9, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> It shows up in the BIOS, it showed up just fine before I changed the BIOS option to disable NVMe RAID, and it shows up on every other computer I have tried it on. So I don't think it is the drive.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I don't suppose you have a usb to nvme adapter so you can try it in another pc easily.

Mine didn't show either initially took deleting the original partitions on another pc to bring it back to visible and more staring about in diskpart to get it working.

Could be a bios option you missed possibly disabling it ie pciex lane allocation or nvme support and also now you have Sata working right can't you try re enabling nvme raid to see if it shows up , it should still boot fine From SATA ahci despite enabling that.

Nvme 2.2 goes missing with some settings on mine I by it disabled now in fact on purpose.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 9, 2020)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> I don't suppose you have a usb to nvme adapter so you can try it in another pc easily.
> 
> Mine didn't show either initially took deleting the original partitions on another pc to bring it back to visible and more staring about in diskpart to get it working.
> 
> ...



I've already tried it on another computer, it shows up just fine. 

Literally the only setting in the BIOS I have changed is changing NVMe RAID from enabled to disabled. I could see it in Windows before changing that option.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 9, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I've already tried it on another computer, it shows up just fine.
> 
> Literally the only setting in the BIOS I have changed is changing NVMe RAID from enabled to disabled. I could see it in Windows before changing that option.


I think it's possible wiping it would fix it as I said , just throwing you ideas bro it shows in another pc as mine did.
Your OS is seeing it as a drive you have no rights to see or something IMHO, I've had this twice only wiping got it working for me.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 9, 2020)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> I think it's possible wiping it would fix it as I said , just throwing you ideas bro it shows in another pc as mine did.
> Your OS is seeing it as a drive you have no rights to see or something IMHO, I've had this twice only wiping got it working for me.



I forgot to say I ran a clean command on it when it was in the other machine.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 9, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I forgot to say I ran a clean command on it when it was in the other machine.


Good lord bro you have my issues beat in the wtaf domain then sorry.
Have you tried re enabling nvme raid , checked pciex allocation stuff , I realize you have only moved one setting but sometimes odd stuff happens elsewhere unexpectedly.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 9, 2020)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Good lord bro you have my issues beat in the wtaf domain then sorry.
> Have you tried re enabling nvme raid , checked pciex allocation stuff , I realize you have only moved one setting but sometimes odd stuff happens elsewhere unexpectedly.



Yeah, I did a BIOS flash and reset.


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## Aquinus (Mar 9, 2020)

If you want to rule out Windows as the issue, have you tried booting a relatively new Linux distro from a flash drive to see if it shows up there? I'd feel better about calling it a BIOS issue if it could be reproduced with either a clean installation or another OS.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 10, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, I did a BIOS flash and reset.


You said it worked in another pc , did you try creating a drive on it , copy some files to definitively destroy the last partition then put it back in yours.
Mine misrepresented a fair few times it took me three days and a fair few attempts to get it alive.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2020)

Aquinus said:


> If you want to rule out Windows as the issue, have you tried booting a relatively new Linux distro from a flash drive to see if it shows up there? I'd feel better about calling it a BIOS issue if it could be reproduced with either a clean installation or another OS.



I've got a few WindowsPE flash drives floating around, heck I can probably boot into a Windows 10 install drive and see if it sees it there.  I'll try that.



theoneandonlymrk said:


> You said it worked in another pc , did you try creating a drive on it , copy some files to definitively destroy the last partition then put it back in yours.
> Mine misrepresented a fair few times it took me three days and a fair few attempts to get it alive.



Yes, the drive is fully functional in another machine.  In fact, when I put it in the other machine, the partition that was on it showed up on that PC and I could read files and write files to it normally.  I did a clean command on the drive and re-initialized it and created a new partition just to be safe.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Mar 10, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I've got a few WindowsPE flash drives floating around, heck I can probably boot into a Windows 10 install drive and see if it sees it there.  I'll try that.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, the drive is fully functional in another machine.  In fact, when I put it in the other machine, the partition that was on it showed up on that PC and I could read files and write files to it normally.  I did a clean command on the drive and re-initialized it and created a new partition just to be safe.


Write a smallish file to it too though?


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2020)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> Write a smallish file to it too though?



I can read and write to the drive normally when it is in the other computer.


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## oobymach (Mar 10, 2020)

Dumb question have you tried the mobo manufacturer nvme driver? It'll be on the mobo install disc somewhere. Does anything show in device manager with a yellow or red icon?


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## xvi (Mar 10, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I can probably boot into a Windows 10 install drive and see if it sees it there. I'll try that.


I would be curious to know this too. Should hopefully point us in the direction of it being an issue with that particular Windows install or if it still doesn't show up, maybe some kind of incompatibility with that NVMe driver and the mobo's AHCI?


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## DAPUNISHER (Mar 10, 2020)

xvi said:


> Should hopefully point us in the direction of it being an issue with that *particular Windows install*


That was the problem in my case. Had a similar issue with a WD Black NVMe not being seen by windows, but appearing in the UEFI. I installed WD SSD dashboard, and fortunately it did see it. It allowed me to erase and format it, which then made it show up in windows. ADATA has their own toolbox, worth a try if it has not already been efforted http://www.adata.com/en/ss/software-6/


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2020)

oobymach said:


> Dumb question have you tried the mobo manufacturer nvme driver? It'll be on the mobo install disc somewhere. Does anything show in device manager with a yellow or red icon?



The only NVMe driver the manufacturer provides is the NVMe RAID driver.  I guess the normal NVMe driver is bundled with the chipset, which is just AMD's chipset driver zipped up.  Which I've already tried installing.

Nothing with a yellow or red icon.



xvi said:


> I would be curious to know this too. Should hopefully point us in the direction of it being an issue with that particular Windows install or if it still doesn't show up, maybe some kind of incompatibility with that NVMe driver and the mobo's AHCI?



I'll try to get this done today.



DAPUNISHER said:


> That was the problem in my case. Had a similar issue with a WD Black NVMe not being seen by windows, but appearing in the UEFI. I installed WD SSD dashboard, and fortunately it did see it. It allowed me to erase and format it, which then made it show up in windows. ADATA has their own toolbox, worth a try if it has not already been efforted http://www.adata.com/en/ss/software-6/



No dice, the tool didn't detect the drive at all.


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## TheLostSwede (Mar 10, 2020)

And what happens if  you force remove the NVMe RAID driver? As it seems that it might be the cause of the problem at this point.


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## ne6togadno (Mar 10, 2020)

what happens when you turn back sata mod to raid. does win find your drive





						Advanced Host Controller Interface - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## bug (Mar 10, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> And what happens if  you force remove the NVMe RAID driver? As it seems that it might be the cause of the problem at this point.


I was about to say: remove all chipset drivers in Windows, install then again clean.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2020)

ne6togadno said:


> what happens when you turn back sata mod to raid. does win find your drive
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Windows doesn't boot because it doesn't have drivers for SATA RAID anymore.  You have to force load AMD's SATA RAID drivers during Windows install because Windows doesn't have the drivers built in, if you remove them later like I did, you can't go back.  I tried.


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## ne6togadno (Mar 10, 2020)

uh. i got a bit lost in the drive switching and win mirroring
let me see if i got it right
during raid era windows was installed on raid made out of 1 nvme and 2 120gb ssd.
you copied this windows to 240ssd (which is different from nvme from raid array)
then you boot windows from 240ssd (sata mod is changed from raid to achi) and windows that is loaded from 240gb ssd cant see nvme drive you've used in the raid.

you said also that you've used clear on nvme drive when it was in other pc for test. the same clear command that bios notes you it will remove everything from your drive? so nvme drive is completely empty. no left overs from raid or other windows installs right?
if nvme drive is visible in other pcs what drive letter it has assigned.
could it be that drive letter of the drive is in conflict with existing drive letters in your amd system?


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2020)

ne6togadno said:


> uh. i got a bit lost in the drive switching and win mirroring
> let me see if i got it right
> during raid era windows was installed on raid made out of 1 nvme and 2 120gb ssd.
> you copied this windows to 240ssd (which is different from nvme from raid array)
> ...



The NVMe drive was never in a RAID array. It was always a stand alone data drive, only the two 120GB SSDs were every used in a RAID array.  Windows was never installed to the NVMe drive, Windows was only on the 120GB SSDs in RAID and the 240GB SSD.  However, I have to change the NVMe mode from normal to RAID mode when I changed the SATA controller from AHCI to RAID, if that makes sense.  So the NVMe drive was running in RAID mode, but not in a RAID with other drivers.

I've dealt with drive letter conflict before, the drive should still be showing up in Drive Manager.



TheLostSwede said:


> And what happens if  you force remove the NVMe RAID driver? As it seems that it might be the cause of the problem at this point.



So this finally got me in the right direction and I figured it out!

So, AMD is stupid(are we surprised?) Even though I uninstalled all the drivers(I thought), the NVMe Controller driver is separate and doesn't get uninstalled when you uninstall all the other drivers. ALSO, normally when you change a controller from RAID back to AHCI/NVMe, the device ID changes so the OS identifies it as a different device entirely.  That's why when I changed the SATA controller form RAID to AHCI, the standard AHCI driver just loaded automatically the next time I booted Windows.  Well guess what, AMD in their infinite wisdom, deciced to not change the device ID of the NVMe controller when you change it from RAID to nromal NVMe mode and vise versa. So, you guessed it, the AMD RAID driver was still loading for the NVMe controller.  But the controller wasn't functional with that driver.  The odd part is there wasn't any error in device manager. As far as Windows was concerned, everhthing was perfectly normal. I just happened to be running through Device Manager and saw something under Storage Controllers called AMD RAID something something(I don't remember exactly what it said, I was just happy to find it and quicly right clicked on it and uninstalled it). I force removed the device and it's drivers through Device Manager, rebooted Windows and BAM I can see the VNMe Drive now!

But this got me wondering.  So I fired up my Windows 10 install media on my Intel system.  I selected the option to load more drivers and loaded the AMD NVMe drivers, and to my surprise it took them. Now, anyone that has done this before knows that normally if you try to load a driver this way that isn't compatible with any hardware in your system, Windows installer won't let you.  But instead Windows loaded the driver normally and applied it to the Intel NVMe controller automatically!  WTF?!  I know it did this, because in my list of drives available to install Windows to, my NVMe drive plugged into the Intel system disappeared, just like what was happening on the AMD system.  This is obviously a horrible design flaw on AMD's side.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that helped, all your suggestions were appreciated.


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## ne6togadno (Mar 10, 2020)

amd had amddrivercleaner.exe (or some similar name) tool for removing drivers. i cant find it now on their cite but if you have it downloaded from your 8350 times it still works.
so far it is the best tool for amd drivers removal i've used.

edit: i've found it. name is amdcleanuputility.exe


			https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-601


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## davepl (Oct 1, 2020)

I was in the same boat, here's what I did:

ENABLED NvME Raid
Run RAIDEXpert2
Deleted all arrays
Cleaned Metadata (THAT is what made the drives reappear in Disk Management)
Continue from there...


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## jazzaddict (Oct 8, 2020)

nvme visible in bios but not in windows under disk manager..
Here is one easy solution that what worked for me:

1. Boot with windows installation disc/usb flas drive.
2. Choose new custom installation, no need to enter product key.
3. Create new partition on nvme drive and format it.
4. Exit installer.


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## jesdals (Oct 8, 2020)

On some boards using certain sata ports vil disable a nvme slot and visa versa - could perhaps be that issue if none of the above mentioned works out


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## kapone32 (Oct 8, 2020)

newtekie1 said:


> I can read and write to the drive normally when it is in the other computer.


Format the drive in the other computer without assigning a letter. That should solve whatever files Windows wrote on that drive to make it unreadable. I have had this issue before and doing that solved it for me. It has to be a NVME adapter attached to another PC though.



newtekie1 said:


> The NVMe drive was never in a RAID array. It was always a stand alone data drive, only the two 120GB SSDs were every used in a RAID array.  Windows was never installed to the NVMe drive, Windows was only on the 120GB SSDs in RAID and the 240GB SSD.  However, I have to change the NVMe mode from normal to RAID mode when I changed the SATA controller from AHCI to RAID, if that makes sense.  So the NVMe drive was running in RAID mode, but not in a RAID with other drivers.
> 
> I've dealt with drive letter conflict before, the drive should still be showing up in Drive Manager.
> 
> ...


It is nice to see there is more than one work around for this problem.


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## wwpadina (Feb 9, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> The NVMe drive was never in a RAID array. It was always a stand alone data drive, only the two 120GB SSDs were every used in a RAID array.  Windows was never installed to the NVMe drive, Windows was only on the 120GB SSDs in RAID and the 240GB SSD.  However, I have to change the NVMe mode from normal to RAID mode when I changed the SATA controller from AHCI to RAID, if that makes sense.  So the NVMe drive was running in RAID mode, but not in a RAID with other drivers.
> 
> I've dealt with drive letter conflict before, the drive should still be showing up in Drive Manager.
> 
> ...


Thank you!


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## davepl (Feb 9, 2021)

Are there enough lanes?  I have 4NvME drives, a x16 video card, and that's all the lanes there are.   I don't know if this card can work when you have 4 nvme in the board as well.


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## BasementComputing (Mar 4, 2021)

I had the same problem with a brand new XPG Gammix S50 lite on an AsRock X570 board.
Formating the SSD or anything like that didnt help in my case. But I *found a solution:*

*Solution:*
*In Device Manager, under Storage controllers, there was a device called "AMD RAID Bottom Device". I right-click -> uninstalled it including its driver software, let  device manager scan for new hardware, and it replaced this device with "Standard NVM Express Controller" and my SSD instantly started working without a reboot.*

How I got there:
After trying everything you guys suggested, (including testing with and without the chipset drivers) I installed Windows (build 2004) on the SSD which worked without a problem. Then I compared what was in device manager between the 2 installations. I installed the Chipset driver and GPU driver, and after that this was the main thing that stood out. It looks like the chipset driver is irrelevant however, since the NVME controller driver I ended up with comes from Microsoft (system32\Drivers\stornvme.sys)

I made this forum account just to post this btw. Hope it helps some of you.


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## thethinker (Mar 9, 2021)

BasementComputing said:


> I had the same problem with a brand new XPG Gammix S50 lite on an AsRock X570 board.
> Formating the SSD or anything like that didnt help in my case. But I *found a solution:*
> 
> *Solution:*
> ...



*Thank you!* I tried everything else. This worked just fine! Had to delete the driver twice, because the first time it was reinstalled again with the "AMD RAID Bottom Device". Windows installed it automatically with the "Standard NVM Express Controller".
Wish I had read this 5h before...


What lead to my problem:
I changed my NVMe SSD due to lack of space. Of course the previous SSD worked fine.


What I've tried:
1. GParted Live (Create new partition table and format to ntfs)
2. Using diskpart with Windows Installer (Alt+F10), which worked but the drive didn't show up because of the fault driver
2.5 Using windows installer to delete and create a new partition
3. Windows Safe mode. Considering the problem this couldn't work.
4. Uninstalling every MB driver, chipset driver, even RAID driver (I don't use RAID)
4.5 Using the "AMD Cleanup Utility"
5. SSD manufacturer service program
6. 3 different partition tools


After attempt nr. 1, 2 and 4.5 I'd had hope, but it didn't work.


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## n0M3n (Apr 13, 2021)

BasementComputing said:


> I had the same problem with a brand new XPG Gammix S50 lite on an AsRock X570 board.
> Formating the SSD or anything like that didnt help in my case. But I *found a solution:*
> 
> *Solution:*
> ...


Just gotta tell you, thank you! It was driving me nuts!
THANK YOU!


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## SenditMakine (Apr 13, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> That's what I'm trying to avoid.  This would be the second re-install thanks to this fight, because the system freaked out when I added the NVMe drive and somehow Windows was corrupted.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


thats a relief, means it is working


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## skadiknmebllz (May 7, 2021)

I just made an account to thank you! I installed latest AMD drivers for my GFX, was gonna start to play and saw that my NVME was gone and could not find it in device manager. Tried ye old sfc /scannow and everything. Nothing worked! Resetting bios, clear cmos, hard reset, remove and add nvme NOTHING.

And then I found this glorious post. I CANT THANK YOU ENOUGH BasementComputing!

I had to delete the device and uninstall it and reboot and it showed up after restart.

I am very sure that latest AMD Radeon software installed and fucked this.


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## Vector79 (May 7, 2021)

I also made an account to thank you guys for figuring it out. 

Today I installed the latest AMD chipset software (Version 2.13.27.501) and my NVMe Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus was gone in Windows, with my whole game library... I deleted the driver under "Storage Controllers" > "AMD RAID Bottom Device" in the device manager, rebooted and the NVMe is back again.


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## gwizdzius (May 7, 2021)

This Solution is best. Works beautiful.


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## BasementComputing (May 8, 2021)

Glad it helped you guys! It's always horrible when basic stuff like this doesnt work and there are no solutions.


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## AsRock (May 8, 2021)

I had some thing like this with a SSD, even though it was working without issue one day it decided not to work in the PC,  so i plugged it in another and it was working perfectly how ever putting it back in the original PC still would not work so i put it back in the other and formatted it and to this day it still works in both PC's.


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## INSTG8R (May 8, 2021)

This hit me yesterday after a bad driver install. Wish I’d seen this solution yesterday. Good too know there’s a pretty easy fix if it happens again.


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## zomgw00t (May 9, 2021)

BasementComputing said:


> I had the same problem with a brand new XPG Gammix S50 lite on an AsRock X570 board.
> Formating the SSD or anything like that didnt help in my case. But I *found a solution:*
> 
> *Solution:*
> ...


oh my god, thank you so much!!


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