Drive not recognized when installing Windows.

Question

My workplace recently ordered a Precision 7920 tower. The system shipped with ubuntu, but after awhile we decided to replace this with Windows. In doing this, I've been running into problems. The 4TB Kioxia NVMe drive that came with the system is not recognized by any installer, Windows, SCCM, or even Ubuntu. It shows up in the bios, but once booted into installation media it will not show up. I moved the drive to a different computer, and it was recognized immediately.  In the BIOS on both machines I have SATA devices set to ACHI and raid disabled, as well as intel VMD turned off for NVMe drives. Dell support would not assist as they shipped the system with ubuntu, and they told me they would not support any operating system that they did not install themselves, so I'm on my own here.

Chino de Oro · Accepted Answer

Download this driver to a non-bootable USB drive. Plug it in together with the Windows installation USB. During Windows installation, at the screen which does not show any drive, just select load driver and browse to load the downloaded driver. The Kioxia will be visible for installation.

Collander · Accepted Answer

What solved my issue: After disabling VMD, you must perform a wipe of the drive from Managemet > Data Wipe in the BIOS.

Collander · Answer

Thank you, this did end up working, but I am curious as to why. I have VMD disabled in the bios, so why would a VMD driver make the device appear?

Precision Fixed Workstations

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