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: