Installing Manjaro on an SSD which is partially used by AMD StoreMI?

Support
1

I have a system running Windows 10 on AMD Ryzen 5 3500. It’s got a 4 TB HDD and a 500 GB M.2 NVMe SSD. Here’s what I want to do:

  1. Keep 300 GB from the SSD as a cache partition for my HDD (for my Windows workspace).
  2. Use the remaining SSD space as a clean partition to install Manjaro.

Here’s what I tried:

  1. I used AMD StoreMI to create a 300 GB cache partition on my SSD. The remaining 200 GB stayed as unallocated space.
  2. I booted to the Manjaro USB boot drive that I had created.
  3. I proceeded to install
    But Manjaro did not detect the unallocated space on my SSD. Instead, it listed the SSD as one 500 GB “unknown drive”. I could format it and install Manjaro, but that would destroy the cache partition I created for AMD StoreMI from my Windows workspace.

So then:
4. I booted back to Windows and assigned the unallocated SSD space to a new clean partition, hoping that it would show up as a separate partition on my SSD during Manjaro installation.
5. I booted to the Manjaro USB boot drive and proceeded to install it again.
It still didn’t help. Manjaro didn’t detect the new SSD partition. It still listed the whole SSD as a 500 GB “unknown drive”.

How do I get past this problem?

I won’t be removing SSD caching from Windows or making any changes to my system that would affect my Windows workflow. (I’m primarily a Windows user and will remain so as long as certain apps and games are not officially ported to Linux.) I wish to install Manjaro on this SSD and nowhere else.
Please help.

2

I would completely reformat that disk, e.g. with gparted from a live ISO boot, install Manjaro on some partitions and then use the remaining space to reimplement the 300 GB cache partition.

2 Likes
3

I would rather think that AMD StoreMI is a driver like “Intel RST”. Therefore… if it is enabled, then you need a special driver, which is not available on linux to read that disk.

5

You are right. It turns out, the freed storage space is actually a virtual drive. So even windows cannot read without an additional driver layer.
I finally got fed up with Windows today, ditched SSD caching, and installed both Manjaro and Windows in clearly-defined, real partitions on my SSD.

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