NVME M.2 not seen to install in Dual-Boot : Is it possible to inject the Intel drivers into the distro .ISO?

UPDATE and FINAL:

I followed the procedure in this link, which took all of 5 minutes with NO data loss:
BIOS process to change to AHCI from RST

I ran 3DMark before & after my change from RST to AHCI and I lost 30 points in the change to AHCI.

I think that my plan NOW is to revert it back to RST, run Manjaro in a fully loaded VM and wait for RST drives to be supported.

I retired from a Windows support role in IT, but I’m a complete Linux n00b, so EVERYTHING is a challenge.

I’ve been struggling to get Manjaro XFCE installed in a Dual-Boot with Win11 because the USB boot will NOT see my NVMe M.2 drives.

Working within Windows 11, is it possible to inject the RST drivers iaStorAC.inf and iaStorAC.inf into the Manjaro XFCE image in such a way that it resolves the no drives found issue?

I DID find a post about making BIOS changes to help Linux see the NVMe drives to install, but I’d love to avoid doing that, if possible.

(I exported these storage drivers from my own Win11 installation using Dism++)

Thanks for any help!

[My System Specs]

Lenovo Legion 7i (Laptop)

Chipset: Intel Comet Lake Rev.02
Southbridge: Intel HM470 Rev. 00

CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i7-10875H CPU @ 2.30GHz (Comet Lake)(10th Gen)
CPU Package: Socket 1440 FCBGA

Memory: 32 GB

Drive Interface: Intel® Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller
Drive Type: NVMe M.2 - 2280
Drive Make and Model: (TWO) NVMe SAMSUNG MZVLB1T0HBLR-000L2

BIOS: Lenovo
Version: E9CN62WW(V4.07)
01/21/2021

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super with Max-Q Design

Edit to add: The laptop was unexpectedly shipped with the two drives in RAID 0. I immediately deleted the array to separate the drives into OS & Storage.

This is the Information that I found regarding the change to AHCI for anybody else who may be searching for this information:

BIOS process to change to AHCI from RST

see this

Last I checked, the kernel maintainers haven’t accepted the RST source code provided by Intel to officially support it under Linux.

Your best bet is to disable it in the BIOS, and use the two “separate” drives, as they will be displayed by the installer. However, this will effectively wipe your current Windows 11 installation.

With the recent changes done to the Manjaro installer (Calamares), the above linked thread suggestions have been implemented, and so it should successfully install and boot, without needing to make any additional manual changes. (However, there are two additional distinct changes that you can do yourself, if the defaults still don’t suffice.) I listed all three in the linked thread.

Keep in mind, this will not work if you have RST enabled in the BIOS.

Also keep in mind, disabling RST is a one-way process if Windows 10/11 was already installed on the system.

1 Like

Hopefully this link will help you

You must manually change storage type from RST to AHCI in BIOS settings for linux to be able to detect the NVME drive

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_Legion_7i#NVME_Detection

Be careful! That’s why I provided these warnings:

Thank You Everybody!!

I updated my original post with a link to the article regarding the BIOS change from RST to AHCI. Especially encouraging is the post from “Mickey” reporting his success on the same laptop as mine.

My laptop was unexpectedly shipped with the two drives in RAID 0. I immediately deleted the array to separate the drives for OS & Storage.

I’m hoping that there won’t be too much drama in doing the BIOS switch, but am slightly concerned that disabling RST is a one-way process if Windows 10/11 was already installed on the system which it was.

Thanks Winnie! Unless I misunderstand what you’re saying: My drives were NOT in a RAID array. I was able to try AHCI, find that I took too much of a performance hit, and changed it back to RST.

All is well, all accomplished using this link with no loss of data. Also, it took about 5 minutes to complete.

BIOS process to change to AHCI from RST

How did you get the installer to detect your drives while still using RST? There is no native Linux support as far as I’m aware.

How is it possible you did that without any data loss? If Windows 11 was pre-installed on the “RAID0” array, as you call it, then destroying the array destroys your Windows 11 data.

EDIT: If your BIOS and Linux installer now see “two” drives, then it is no longer using RST.

I’m curious how you got around this warning when disabling RST with Windows already pre-installed to the “drive” (i.e, “RAID0 array”):

30 points in 3DMark is the literal equivalent of like 0.00000000001%. Its literally margin of error. I guarantee you run that same benchmark 10 times and 6 of those runs will probably be 30 points in the OTHER direction. Its nothing.