[Fixed] We Couldn’t Find Any Drives – Windows 11/10 Installation

I overcame several issues while installing Windows 11 on the latest Dell Latitude laptop. In this guide, let me show the solutions to fix these errors. The major error was: We couldn’t find any drives. To get a storage driver, click Load driver.

My scenario was to install Windows 11 from a USB drive on a brand-new Dell latitude laptop. Even though I’m talking about these issues and solutions for Dell laptops and Windows 11, it applies to other brand laptops and Windows 10 installation too.

How to Fix We Couldn’t Find Any Drives. To get a Storage Driver Error:

I encountered two issues with the Windows 11 installation.

Could not boot from USB

It is because Secure Boot is enabled on the new laptop. The way my bootable USB is created requires turning off the Secure Boot. So, if you face a similar issue, disable the secure boot on your laptop.

What is Secure Boot?

Secure Boot is a feature of recent computers that helps to prevent unauthorized software from running on the device during the boot process. When Secure Boot is enabled, the computer will only boot from software signed with a digital certificate from a trusted source like Microsoft. This helps to protect the computer from the malware that might try to infect the system during the boot process. Secure Boot is often used with other security features, such as Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and BitLocker, to provide an additional layer of protection for the device.

Each laptop has different BIOS settings; please follow the steps applicable to your laptop model to disable secure boot.

“We couldn’t find any drives. To get a storage driver, click load driver” issue.

Once I disabled the secure boot, I could boot the Windows 11 installation from USB. But during the hard disk detection, I got this error. For some time, I really thought that the new laptop did not come with a hard disk.

We need to change the storage controller type (SATA Operation) to overcome these issues. Windows 10 or 11 installation process will not detect the hard disk if the controller type is set to RAID On.

Do we really need RAID settings? If you think it is better to have, you need to download the RAID controller driver from the Dell manufacturer and load the drivers while installing.

I didn’t use this method, so I can’t provide further steps/information.

As a quick solution, we can change the SATA Operation type to ACHI.

Under the Storage option, you will find ‘SATA/NVMe Opertation’ in the Dell laptop BIOS. You can visit the Dell BIOS by pressing F2 while booting the computer. Your laptop model and brand may have different options to navigate to these BIOS settings; check them first.

I’m sure you will see the ‘RAID On’ option is enabled.

Change it to the ACHI/NVMe option and Save the settings.

Now boot the laptop with the same USB disk to start the installation. It will boot from USB and detect the hard disk (probably the SSD or NVME) to continue the installation.

To use an NVMe drive on a computer, the motherboard must support NVMe, and the Operating System must have drivers for NVMe. If the motherboard does not support NVMe, it may be possible to use an NVMe drive with an AHCI interface, although this will typically result in slower performance.

Potentially this solution will work for the users who get the “No drives were found. Click Load Driver to provide a mass storage driver for installation” error too.

This simple solution will help solve this hard disk detection error during the Windows 11/10 installation on most laptops and desktop computers. As mentioned earlier, if you want to use the capabilities of the RAID controller and the features of your computer, download the relevant drivers from the official website and load them during the Windows installation.