I'm not sure what you mean by Linux version. GParted is a Linux kernel on the USB, so it's always booting into a small Linux distro. I used x64 architecture edition though, to suit the hardware. Got from https://gparted.org/download.php

That's a little different. You wanted to boot from 2d drive and it wasn't bootable. My first SSD just died, as it turns out, so computer wasn't bootable. But thanks! No choice but get a new SSD. The old one dead in other computers as well, too, that's a double check that it died.

Yeah it'll show but you can't do anything because 1. you can't INSPECT 2. half way through trying to partition it fails.

I see that all the Acers I have are RST. I found a page on Intel's site where Intel said there's really no reason to use their driver unless you use Optane. So if I ever have to reconfig these computers I will drop to AHCI. I might dangerously try rebooting my computer and see if Windows will pick up and use AHCI drivers automatically. My fresh install seemed to do that (because I restored an RST Windows image onto AHCI configured computer - it took an extra reboot and Windows "installed" for another minute). Dangerous though.