The drive is detected by the bios and currently has Nix OS installed on it. I tried disabling secure boot in the BIOS but I’m unsure what else to try?
The bootable Windows USB drive was created in a Windows VM using Rufus. It’s just problem after problem with this one! Now I got past the driver request screen (special Rufus magic), but now the Windows install doesn’t see my NVME SSD - Western Digital SN850X 8TB? Do I need to load a driver for it? That seems so peculiar but idk. I’m thinking of creating a Gparted live USB and formatting this drive that I am typing with rn on NixOS. Is that worth doing? Any better ideas?
So, there’s a peculiarity with the system firmware on the Framework Laptop series.
I’ve only seen it come up in two cases, but they have identical symptoms (the SSD can’t be found in the Windows preinstallation environment).
People booting the Windows ISO using Ventoy
People writing the Windows ISO directly to the flash drive (rather than creating a filesystem on it and copying the files to make it bootable.)
Something about the disk emulation mode the firmware uses for these two cases makes Windows unable to detect the SSD.
To be clear, you shouldn’t need drivers. Windows has supported NVMe for the better part of two decades. Loading drivers will probably not change anything.
Now, I know you used Rufus and you’re not in group 1. I also have to assume you’re not in group 2, and you have a normal filesystem on your install media (FAT32 or FAT32 + NTFS).
Can you recall which options you used in Rufus when you prepared your install media?
Welcome to the community. It sounds like you have done a lot of background and taken all the right steps to make a bootable USB drive. An alternative is to use the Windows VM and download the Microsoft Bootable Installer for Windows 11 and let it format/create the bootable USB drive.
You will have to contend with the fact you need to create a local account though since the WiFi drivers are not native to the Windows installation and it wants to connect to the Internet as part of its installation. You can still bypass this requirement but be sure to read up on the latest changes Microsoft has done to make it harder to use a “local” account and without an internet connection. I read an article a few months ago that they may have changed some of the workarounds that used to work in the past.
@DHowett is an expert with Framework machines for sure. Maybe it is something with the options with Rufus.
I had a case where the installation media did not detect an NVMe drive for installation though it was an ancient Dell NVMe I tried repurposing for a boot drive and after reading online about that particular model it turned out to be an issue with others outside of native Dell laptops. I relegated it to a SSD enclosure and it has worked like a champ ever since. The standalone Framework board I was trying to put it on was solved with just buying a $35 SSD. In your case though that 8TB drive (huge drive too!) should have zero issues and is really new.
I used all of the default options and windows experience options in Rufus (same as the framework guide) except that I added a local account as an additional windows experience option.