Welcome to this quick guide
where I'm going to show you how to fix no drives detected during the
Windows 10 or Windows 11 installation. So if you're trying to install Windows and you get this error where it says
we couldn't find any drives, the obvious first thing you should
check is the physical connections. So just double check the cables
connecting the drive to your computer. Make sure that both the power and the SATA
cable are properly connected to the drive, and that the SATA cable is properly
connected to the motherboard as well. If your computer uses an NVMe SSD, make sure that
it's properly connected to the board as well. Once you're completely sure that
it's not a physical connection issue, you can go ahead and look at the drivers. What you'll need to do is, you'll
need to download the correct drivers and then copy them to a USB flash drive, which you can then use during the
Windows installation to install the proper drivers for the storage
controller on your motherboard. Now if you have an Intel-based system,
you'll need one of these two drivers, and I'll have links to these
drivers in my written guide, which will be the first link
in the video's description. These drivers are the Intel Rapid Storage
Technology Driver, also known as IRST driver, and you have two versions, one for
10th and one for 11th gen processors, and the other one is for 11th
up to 13th gen processors. So go ahead and download the correct driver, depending on what generation
processor you have in your computer. I'm going to be downloading the
latest one, and to download it, just scroll down until you find this
download button and then click on that. Accept the terms. Once the setup RST file is finished
downloading, don't open the file, and also don't just copy this
.exe file to the USB flash drive, as the Windows installation won't be able
to get the drivers from this.exe file. Instead, you'll need to open the downloads folder,
and then you want to copy this SetupRST file, so I'm just going to go ahead and right
click on it and then click on copy, and then you want to go to local disk C, and here
on your C drive you want to create a new folder, so I'll right click and then select new
folder, and you need to call this folder temp, and then press enter to create the folder. Once you've created this
temp folder, you can open it, and then you can right click and
paste the SetupRST file here, and once you have the SetupRST
file in the temp directory, you'll need to open a new
PowerShell window as admin, so to do that, you can right
click on your start menu, whether you're using Windows 10 or Windows 11, and then you can choose this option
that says Windows PowerShell with admin. If you don't see Windows PowerShell here, and
it says Windows Terminal or Command Prompt, it won't work, and in that case, you
can just do a search for PowerShell, and then once you find it in the search results,
you can just click on run as administrator. Once you have the PowerShell window
open, you can type the following command, and then press enter, and this will change the directory to the temp folder
we created on the C drive, and after that, you want to type this command, and I'll have all of these
commands in my written guide, which will be the first link
in the video's description, so you can just go ahead and
copy and paste it from there, and what this does, it extracts the drivers we'll
need to a directory called RST on the C drive, but once you have this command, you
can just press enter on the keyboard. Once it's done that, we can
close the PowerShell window, and we can go back to the local disk C. Here you'll have the RST folder, and
then you can open up this folder, and just keep opening up all the folders until
you get to this directory, which is called VMD, and then you want to find this
driver called iaStorVD.sys. Once you've found this file, you'll need to plug in your USB flash
drive if you haven't done so already, and then you can right click on this, and then
copy it, and navigate to your USB flash drive, and then paste it onto the USB flash drive. So once you have this file on the USB flash drive, you can go ahead and plug this into the
computer where you're trying to install Windows, and then during the Windows installation
where it says we couldn't find any drives, you can click on Load Driver,
then you can click on Browse, and on this list, you need to navigate to your USB
flash drive that you plugged into the computer, and then select it, and click on OK. I'm recording this on a virtual machine,
and it doesn't use this Intel RST driver, but you'll see a different screen here
where you can select the Intel VMD driver, and then you can install that, and
once you've installed that driver, you should be seeing your drive listed here, and then you can continue
with the Windows installation. If you're still not able to detect your drive
and the Intel RST driver didn't work for you, do a search for system
information, and then open that, and then on this list, have a look at your
baseboard manufacturer and baseboard product. If you're using a laptop, then
get your laptop's model number, and then do a Google search for your motherboard's
make and model, or your laptop's make and model, and go to the manufacturer's website, and on their website, you'll find the
drivers for your specific motherboard, then on the list of drivers, you want to find the
SATA, RAID, or AHCI drivers, and then expand that. I have an AMD motherboard, but if you have
an Intel motherboard or AMD motherboard, have a look at the available drivers here. For instance, this one says it's to
be used during the Windows setup. So if I download that, extract these driver
files, and I have a look inside these folders, I can see there's NVMe RAID
drivers and SATA RAID drivers. So what I would do in this case is, I would just copy both of these
folders onto my USB flash drive, start the Windows installation again, and
let the Windows installation scan for any applicable drivers it can find in these folders. So yours might look different
than what you're seeing here, but the point I'm trying to
make is download the SATA drivers for your specific motherboard or laptop, and then use that during the Windows installation. I do hope this guide helps you out. Please like the video, and watch any of
my other helpful guides on this channel, and I'll see you in the next one.
