BIOS not detecting SSD

[brandonomen]

Hi I recently added a new SSD to the second M.2 slot below the GPU for the OMEN 30L Desktop GT13-0380t.

It is a Samsung 980 (non-pro) drive. After installing a fresh drive and installing windows on it through a usb, I was not able to locate the Samsung drive in the Omen Setup Utility (UEFI Boot Options).

For context I have another OS (Linux) sitting in my first M.2 slot which is a WD Black drive (which works fine).

For some reason when looking at the boot options the windows boot manager appears to be using the WD drive instead of the Samsung drive (no idea why). I am able to boot into Windows using the windows boot manager (somehow) and thus am able to see it in the Windows Disk Manager, but cannot get it to show in the UEFI Boot Options. I am also able to download files browse web, etc.

I ran a hardware diagnostic on the drives and the Samsung drive incurred a DST short/long warning. The Samsung drive is brand new and appears to work so I am not sure what the issue is here, could this be related to not showing up in boot options.

From a practical perspective, I can use my entire computer (both Windows10 and Linux) however, there are differently unresolved errors such as DST warning and the Samsung drive failing to appear in boot options.

How should I go resolving these issues, thanks in advance.

[itsmyname]

@brandonomen -- I ran a hardware diagnostic on the drives and the Samsung drive incurred a DST short/long warning. The Samsung drive is brand new and appears to work so I am not sure what the issue is here.

Getting any "warning" on a brand-new disk-drive should make you "hit the brakes".

Return to the store that sold it to you, and exchange it, and test that the replacement is "100% good".

> could this be related to not showing up in boot options.

Probably not. The Windows "boot loader" is a tiny partition on the primary disk-drive (your WD?).

It can be updated to list more than one disk-drive to be displayed in a "boot menu".

Does the SSD show up in the Windows "Disk Management" app?

If so, then you can allocate a drive-letter to a partition on the SSD, and then install some Operating System onto that partition.

[brandonomen · Accepted solution]

Good new, the problem is solved (more or less).

This was the route I took to get the drive to recognize. 

First I disconnected all SSD / HDD from the desktop. Then I used an external USB to download windows onto the Samsung SSD. Afterwards the Samsung drive finally appeared in the BIOS. 

Afterwards I reconnected all my drives. I cannot confirm but believe if you used the standard windows recovery your would be done here and all your drives should be readable from the boot menu.

Unfortunately for me I used HP's recovery tool and it resets the entire computer back to factory settings which was not great since I had a Linux partition... 😞

So what ended up happening for me was my Linux drive became unaccessible as booting into the drive would yield a windows blue screen error.

Luckily my drive was using POP_OS so I used an external usb to boot into linux (https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-recovery/) and from there used their recovery media and alas all my drives are accessible.

There is still this annoying windows drive on the linux which I have yet to resolve but when I do I will post it here.