Predator PH 315-53 laptop BIOS sees M.2 SSD, but Operating System does not

DavidPitts · May 2023

Hi, I have a Predator PH 315-53 laptop. It has 2 m.2 drive slots. It came with a 1TB m.2 3x4 SSD drive. I can put that drive in either slot and it works just fine, so nothing wrong with the slots/wiring.

I bought a new XPG SX8100 M.2. 2280 PCIe Gen 3x4 SSD . (The one that came with the laptop is a Western Digital)

I put the new SSD into the system, fits just fine. Boot to BIOS, BIOS sees it, reads the manufacturer and S/N. Boot to Windows 11 and it fails to see the drive at all. Going to Device Manager shows the WDC drive, but that's it. System > Storage > Disks and Volumes doesn't see it either. Obviously, I can't partition something the OS doesn't see.

System: PH315-53-76JX-US W10HCML64P/I7-10870H/BT/RTX 3080/32G/1TB PCI NVME/4L3.22/15.6

Has anyone seen this before?

Puraw · May 2023

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/685220/predator-ph-315-53-laptop-bios-sees-m-2-ssd-but-operating-system-does-not

Open Disk Manager in Windows and click on that new drive, if it is not yet initialized do that now, give it a letter not used, select GPT (not MBR) and New simple volume, see below for more details.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/initialize-new-disks

StevenGen · May 2023

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/685220/predator-ph-315-53-laptop-bios-sees-m-2-ssd-but-operating-system-does-not

You will find that this new XPG SX8100 M.2 drive will show in Device Manager and it will be shown in Disk Management in Win-11 OS, go to Disk Management and do the following:

Right-click the XPG SX8100 M.2 drive with the "Offline label" and select the Online option.
Then Right-click the partition on the hard drive without a drive letter and select the "Change Drive Letter and Paths" option.
Click the Add button.
Select the "Assign the following driver letter" option and give it the drive "D" letter, as that will make this drive be recognized in File Explorer in Windows, simple.

As doing all the above will show the new M.2 drive in Windows File Explorer, also remember that the 2nd M.2 SSD drive slot is not as quick as the 1st M.2 SSD slot which will run at the full read/write speeds of the PCIe3x4, the 2nd M.2 SSD slot will run at about 50% slower, so be aware of all this and if you want to play games put your games on the boot drive, as its allot quicker than the slave M.2 drive in the 2nd M.2 SSD slot. I'm using two of the quickest 1TB M.2 PCIe 3x4 drives in my Nitro 5 and the boot drive runs on CrystalDiskMark benchmarks for the boot M.2 drive at 3500MB/s read/write while the same M.2 SSD drive in the slave and 2nd SSD slot runs at 1800MB/s, so be aware of this factor.

DavidPitts · May 2023

I thank you for your replies, StevenGen and Puraw. However, you are not understanding. The operating system is NOT seeing the drive. It doesn't see it in Device Manager, in Disk Management, etc.

Commodore_1995# · May 2023

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1201927#Comment_1201927

Can you send a picture of the bios info tab? If the ssd is showing up in the bios info tab but not showing up in windows, try this:
a) first enable safeboot via msconfig:

b) then restart windows so that it starts in safe mode and go to device manager:

c) then uninstall and delete that driver:

d) restart windows again and check if the new ssd is showing up in device manager and then in disk management:

DavidPitts · May 2023

Thank you egydiocoelho for taking the time and making the great suggestion. Unfortunately, that won't work on my Win 11 system as those don't exist in (my version of) win 11.

What I did figure out was that it was a security issue. I had to turn off secure boot. Once I did that, the OS could see it.