Drives not detected when installing Windows 10 or 11 – IT Solver Support

When installing the Windows 10 or 11, no storage drives show up when asks you "Where do you want to install Windows?".

It can be quite disconcerting because it makes you think the drive has failed, when most likely it's just the drive controller is set to RAID format, instead of ACHI.

There's two ways to resolve this.

You can boot into the UEFI firmware menu and change the drive controller from RAID to ACHI.
Suggested fix: load the driver. We suggest this method because this solves for potential future "windows won't boot" issue after a firmware updates that sometimes set the drive controller to RAID.

Follow the instructions below to properly detect available storage drives for OS installation.

Download the appropriate Intel® RST driver packages:
F6flpy-x64(Intel® VMD).zip - mobile/laptop platforms
F6flpy-x64(Intel® Non-Intel® VMD).zip - desktop platforms
unzip zip folders separately to a USB flash drive, the Windows 10 install USB will do just fine.
Start the Windows® 10 64-bit OS Installation process.
Load the Intel® RST driver from step 1.
Press Load driver.
Press Browse.
Select the USB drive that contains the F6 driver and expand the folder that contains the driver. Press OK.
Select the matching driver from one of the two folders and press Next to proceed.
When the matching folder is selected, confirm the matching driver (iaStorVD.sys or iaStorAC.sys ) will be highlighted and press Next.
Select the drive for OS installation,
delete the partitions so you have clean drive of unallocated space ready for a fresh install of windows and press Next.

Example Dell system drive with a bunch of partitions:

Now ready for a fresh install of Windows:

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