Computer no longer recognizes infernal M.2 drive

[Jacob2022]

A few weeks ago windows corrupted on my HP laptop. I cleared the internal drive, formated it, and put in a boot drive to reinstall windows. The drive works completly fine. However after that I noticed that the internal drive is no longer reconized by my pc. Is there a software fix to this problem? 

[Huffer]

Not sure I understand. The drive works fine yet the internal drive is not recognized. The model number you give is a generic model series identifier so can you say what drives are in the computer? An M.2 SSD and then also a hard drive?

[Jacob2022]

The M.2 SSD is the only drive in the system. I'm referring to that as the internal drive. I have taken the drive out on its own and tested it. To which it works normally within another system.

[Huffer]

So did Windows install onto it or not? Sorry to be difficult but the description of what happened is hard to follow. When you boot from the Windows installer is the M.2 recognized as a place to put Windows? Is it an M.2 which came with the laptop or did you add it?

[Jacob2022]

Sorry I probably should have been more descriptive. When using the installer the M.2 is not recognized as a place to put windows. It is also not recognized when using the command prompt to search it up via diskpart. The M.2 Is the original drive that came with the laptop and has been the only drive ever in the laptop. 

[Huffer]

I guess the reason I am a bit dense here is because this is a pretty rare thing. An otherwise working internal drive not recognized by the system. Logically, the defect would seem to be the motherboard but that is an extreme assumption. Have you tried putting the M.2 in and running the UEFI (preboot) diagnostics to see if it is recognized that way? 

https://support.hp.com/us-en/help/hp-pc-hardware-diagnostics

Select the section about diagnosing outside the OS

[Jacob2022]

Using the UEFI diagnostics method the drive is recognized and passes all tests that the diagnostics system can run. This should indicate that there are no hardware issues.

Side note: My UEFI diagnostics is on version 2.2.8.0. After watching the video provided by your link I noticed that was a much older version. Would it be helpful to update the bios to diagnose any deeper issues at this moment or is that not essential moving forward?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Updating the BIOS is really part of general maintenance but unlikely to have much of an impact on this. I would want to go through exactly what happens when you try to install Windows from a flash drive. I think Windows may need a driver specially loaded on certain later model processors to see an NVME M.2 SSD. What CPU is in your machine? 11th gen Intel Core? This from Dell explains the situation:

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-lv/000188116/intel-11th-generation-processors-no-drives-can-be...

[Jacob2022]

That did it! All it needed was the driver for intel rapid storage. Thank you so much for the help!

[Huffer]

You are welcome...glad to have helped