@337harvey, i had a issue 4-5 weeks ago that zorin didnt want to use my second m2 drive to install zorin on. What i did was removing both samsung drives. Booted back in the live and now zorin can be installed on the WD drive
Samsung 980 1tb m.2. nvme
Western Digital blue 1tb m.2. sata
Samsung 870 2tb sata 3
I dont know why because when all drives where attached and selected to manually partition a drive it just saw my second m2 drive. But when i selected install next to windows 10 i only saw both samsung drives and the WD was not listed.
The funny thing is when i installed zorin on the WD drive and reattached samsung everything worked fine. I did a clean install 1 week later, booted live and selected the option install next to windows 10 and now the live session saw the WD drive...i didnt had to remove the samsung drives like before.
When you get a new drive, unlike micro-sd cards, it is not formatted nor does it contain a partition table (because it's blank). Software like gparted actually interacts with the hardware at a lower level, allowing partition manipulation and recognition of an un-formatted drive. You have to prepare it prior to use in gparted, windows would have you do the same. This can cause issues with a system recognizing it and offering it as an option to store or install to. Though the bios recognized it, it would not offer anything because it didn't have a partition table, necessary for boot or storage devices in any os.
That is strange. Have you noticed any issues with the drive? Not all drives are perfect when they come off the line. I have had to send a few hdd's back before because they were defective (similar issue with Seagate and Western Digital). That's why I'm asking. You possibly could have gotten a drive with issues from manufacturing (corrupt instruction set, bad chips, incomplete soldering during assembly, any number of issues).
That will take some looking into. I may not be able to find the issue, but it doesn't mean I won't try. If you wouldn't mind giving me some time to look into this. Would you mind providing your system info again here (Computer make and model, maybe the output of lshw) ?
Michel, while your gathering info to post so that Mr. Harvey can help you, would you also please update your profile to reflect which version of Zorin OS you are using?
Thanks!
Now in regards to PCIE NVME M.2 drives, they don't connect exactly the same as SATA drives do. M.2's use the PCIE gen 3 and gen 4 lanes on the motherboard, and they are usually configured in RAID.
I am still learning about these new drives myself, but what little I know, I understand like on my notebook for example, they have to be enabeld for RAID for both drives to be seen and used on the same motherboard.
The western digital is also visible because zorin os in installed on it. I try to explain it more detailed today with screenshots. The topic title is not correct either.
@337harvey, here i made a nice video of it today. It happend again but now it did not see my Samsung 980 1TB NVMe m2 and also didn't see the Western Digital 1 1tb m2 SATA m2. The first time it happend (4-5 weeks ago) the Samsung 980 drive was visible as well (Windows 10 drive) the Western Digital (sandisk drive) was EMPTY back then and formatted in NTFS (i used it and made it empty). That was the first time i wanted to install linux and my WD drive was not visible in that part.
Good thing that you posted this video. Unless I am wrong, this looks like a clear bug with the installer software. And if other people come across this, we might be able to start seeing a pattern to confirm it. But for all we know, it may only happen with certain hardware.
Michel, did your computer have Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST)? This is an intel fake raid that has been causing issues, especially with hybrid storage (ssd & hdd) setups. This might also cause issues with NVMe & sata hybrid setups.
I didn't get any errors during setup, only drives missing as shown in the video. Anyway Zorin is installed already 4-5 weeks ago on the WD drive. I manually formatted it with Gparted installed zorin manually only i messed things up (home root whatever i did, im a noob lol) so i did a reinstall back then, this time i could select the wd drive to install besides the windows 10 install (where it first didn't show up).