Issue with not being able to access second m.2 ssd storage device.

[bizbarley]

Hey guys, I just added a second m.2 ssd storage device to my Zbook 15 G3. I first checked the Crucial website for my HP model to confirm compatibility. I also saw a video of someone installing the exact same drive into my identical laptop, but it was just an installation guide. I am very familiar with these types of installation.

However, after installing and booting up the computer, I cannot find the device in the "This PC>Users> and then there is just the C: and no other drives listed. That said, I went into the BIOS, and the drive is listed and recognized. I went into the device manager while Windows 10 Pro was up and running, the device is listed under storage. I went into the system info panel display, under hardware and devices, it's listed as installed and "working properly."

I went back to BIOS, checked in the boot menu, made sure the device was not disabled, it is not, everything on earth tells me this should show up in my "This PC" computer disk directory. Perhaps it needs to be formatted correctly or something, but I am not sure how to do that because I am unable to access it, I just know that it's there and the computer recognizes it.

Info on the device: Crucial P3 500GB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 3500MB/s - CT500P3SSD8 

Again, everything says it's detected and running properly. I tried hitting update drivers, which is a whole other topic i plan to make, but I really need your help to figure out what to do. Thank you for your help in advance.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

From what you wrote, it seems to me like you have to initialize the disk.

Initialize new disks | Microsoft Learn

[bizbarley · Accepted solution]

EDIT: I think I figured it out myself. I searched and searched, no one had the right answer. Watched dozens of videos, mostly were for people that did have have the drive showing up in the BIOS. Or it was a partition they needed to create in device manager. That was basically every video and tutorial I have found, but nothing helped me, because everything shows a healthy, working m.2 in my system. It just does not appear in drives and devices. Even HP Manager said the device was there and in good working order.
 
So what I did was kind of reverse engineer what they were doing. I deleted the volume in disk manager and tried to make problems worse, so I could follow their directions to correct the issue, and that kind of worked. Finally I deleted the volume from disk manager altogether. It was now completely unallocated space. Then I was able to assign it a disk letter, and then I was able to formatted it. It formatted it as a NTFS because that is the same format the m.2 that came with the zbook is set at.
 
Now my plans are to set up a dual boot system hopefully. So I can switch between the Windows 10 Pro OS and the Linux Mint OS depending on the tasks I need done at my workstation. I am completely dreading the effort that is going to take. Given my HP Support Assistant scans my laptop and says everything is up to date, yet when I check on the available driver and software updates for my HP Zbook 15 G3, it lists many things, like the BIOS version (mine is 1.45 from January 6th, 2020, and the newest is version 1.60 from April 23rd, 2023, so I have no idea what to do with all that) not being the latest version by date. I have no idea how to figure out whether or not I am actually using the latest software/firmware/up-to-date drivers/BIOS version.
 
But I think I was able to work this out. So if this happens to anyone else. I will probably mark this as solved. So that you can quickly find what to do. There are posts all over Reddit asking this same questions with no solutions. So maybe this will help someone else.
 
Cheers.

[bizbarley]

Yes Mr. Tikkanen, that was one of the solutions I found out about later in my researching, however, after trying to figure it out (none of the methods I watched in video tutorials gave me the option, nor the CMD) I was unable to replicate what the instructions stated, due to lack of that specific option showing up. However, the good news is that I seem to have finally figured it out.

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly with a suggestion. It would have definitely put me on the right track.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.