No Local Disks found during installation

[ertily]

I am getting the “No Local Disks Found” problem during installation of Workstation33. I have studied the documentation thoroughly and do not see an answer.

Laptop is a newer DELL UEFI system. I created a bootable USB image using Fedora Media creator on it. I can boot to it and it works fine running from USB. When installing from Anaconda, when it gets to the configuration page it shows No Local Disks found, not even the USB. Documentation states UEFI Secure mode is not relevant. I have tried it with that off and on, neither works. Any suggestions?

[tjdoyle (Tom Doyle)]

Hard drive not visible in Anaconda

Hi, I am trying to install Fedora 32 on an Acer Aspire 5 Laptop. (Bought just last week, so no surprise:UEFI.) I managed to boot the Workstation Live DVD from an USB hard drive. However, when I start Anaconda, coming to the hard drive configuration, there is no hard drive visible. (Neither the builtin hard drive, nor the external drive, that was used for booting.) I assume, there is some problem with the BIOS, or the like, but I have no idea, what it might be. So, any suggestion, or hint, w…

[yolo]

Hi,
Check your disk mode in the bios : RAID, IDE or AHCI and switch from Raid to AHCI (take care if you have already an OS installed!). The ssd/NVMe should appear during next boot for your Fedora installation.
Regards,
Jérémie

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

I agree that:

1. Secure Boot is unlikely to be related here
2. But other UEFI settings like a RAID drive mode may be the problem.

Note that Anaconda won’t show you the USB drive you booted from as an available installation target, because it doesn’t make any sense to show it. That doesn’t mean that the system is unable to see any devices.

What Dell model is this specifically?

[ertily]

It is a Dell Latitude 14 - 5400 Laptop with Intel i5.

I am going to try the switch from RAID to AHCI later. Saw these instructions: How to Switch from RAID to AHCI without Reinstalling Windows 10 | Password Recovery. Crossing my fingers that Windows will work afterwards.
Another question - If this works and this disk is recognized in Anaconda, I want to add disk encryption. I will be shrinking the Windows partition and creating another for Fedora. Does disk encryption only impact the new partition for Linux or will it impact the Windows one also?

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Hmmmm. Do you know what drive model is in your laptop? I found a random blog post suggesting that at least as of a couple of years ago that model shipped with a Western Digital drive )WD SN520 NVMe SSD) without Linux compatibility.

On your other question: yes, no worry. The encryption is at the partition level and will only affect where you’re installing Fedora Linux.

[ertily]

I was able to successfully switch from RAID to AHCI. This resolves the problem and the disk is recognized by the install program.

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

Hi @ertily! Glad you got this working! Can you please mark the AHCI response as a solution, and create a new thread for your followup problem? (See Site tip: the best way to ask a follow-up question). That way, it’ll be easier for future vistors to find the answer to both your original problem and the new one.