Hi, I recently decided to change the operating system on my Acer Nitro 5 Laptop. Before doing that I was able to use all of my 3 drives, a small 150GB ssd (by small I mean the ones that are like a square rather than a long rectangle) , a 750GB ssd and a 1TB hdd, on Windows 11 with no issue. But during and after the setup my laptop stopped recognizing the 750GB ssd in the os and in the bios. I also tried opening up the laptop to see if everything is fine and it doesn’t seem to be a problem with the hardware. Any clue on what is happening? Thanks to everyone in advance!
More details would help us understand your issue:
Please run inxi -Dzxx in a terminal to see if all 3 drives are detected.
- was Windows the only OS when the problem SSD was working?
- did you preserve Windows to dual boot with Fedora?
- was Windows using encryption?
Only the 2 are detected when running the command. Before Fedora I had Windows 10 and then updated it to 11, the problem ssd worked fine on both. I didn’t preserve Windows and I didn’t use encryption on it.
I found specs for Acer Nitro 5 Laptop. They only mention a single internal drive. Does your system support multiple internal drives or are you using external USB cases? What is the model of the drive that isn’t working?
Check for a UEFI/BIOS setting to disable Intel VME.
I’ve been looking and I got wrong what king of drives I have installed. On my model I have installed a SKhynix 128GB ssd and a Western Digital 1TB hdd with a ribbon cable. What I thought was a small ssd it’s actually an Intel wifi card I think.
But still I remember that back when I used Windows I had 3 partitions, one with 128GB (C:), another with 750GB (D:) and the one with 1TB (E:). And I remember that the D: partition was as fast as the C: and that the E: was the slowest for being an hdd. I don’t think it was partitioned wrongly since I remember that there were games that could run smoothly on D: but not on E: .
So I don’t know if it’s some king of on board storage but I can say that there are 750GB of storage missing.
Fire up Gnomes partition manager or the KDE Partition Manager as appropriate.
What physical devices does it find? You should also be able to see their entire size and how they are currently partitioned. Post a screenshot and we’ll work it out.
We can do all of this from the command line, but I suspect it’ll be easier for you in a GUI.
Some lower-end devices have/had eMMC storage on-board, but that wouldn’t have given you 750GB of SSD-speed storage.
Is your laptop the same model pictured here?
The one in the picture does have two SSDs (an SKhynix and a WD Blue), as well as the squareish thing which I think is the wifi/Bluetooth card as you say.
According to your screenshots, you’re either recollecting incorrectly (which is doubtful - 750GB is a large chunk to imagine!) or you have a failed or dead device in this kit.
You could go into the BIOS and see what it claims to be able to see and then physically open the tin up and find what you really do have installed in there. Maybe it’s as simple as a SATA cable or a power cable which has worked loose or maybe a drive which has indeed entirely failed.
I concur though - there are currently only two storage devices in there which are being found. A 250GB drive a 1TB drive. I’d have expected them to be picked up as nvme devices though rather than /dev/sd* assuming those screenshots from PG are the same kit you have.
Nope, from what I’ve seen after opening it up I only have one slot for an SSD.
The SSD could be an M.2 SATA rather than NVMe? Some laptops (e.g. my 2018 Asus) have a slot that can accept either.
Unsure - I’ll have to take your word for it that they do exist - I’m quite clueless with laptops tbh. I use the company supplied kit and when they conk out, have a new one shipped out and sling the old one back.
Where can I find what drives does the computer detect in the bios? I think I have an idea where but I’m not 100% sure lol.
I’ll soon post what I found in the bios and a photo of the internals because I’ve checked multiple times and maybe I’m not finding something obvious.
Very much depends on your BIOS to be honest. Usually it’s marked fairly clearly, maybe under “boot devices” or “boot order”.
1 Like