UPDATE 2: Dell officially responded here and confirmed that they released a new BIOS version (1.3.2) that is supposed to resolve the AHCI boot issue on BIOS 1.2.3. I'm going to give it a shot later tonight with the most recent BIOS.

UPDATE: I also found this thread which reports that the system will not boot at all in AHCI using BIOS 1.2.3, which is pretty alarming. However, it's not certain whether this is limited to certain brands of NVMe drives, or if all are affected.

I picked up a refurbished XPS 13 (9360) and am planning to set up dual boot Windows 10 / Ubuntu 16.10, but according to this, I have to switch the SATA operation mode from RAID (default) to AHCI. This causes the existing Windows image to become inoperable since it was installed under RAID by Dell.

OK, that's not a problem since it's a fresh install anyway, so I make a bootable USB from an ISO straight from Microsoft using Rufus, and discover that the NVMe drive doesn't show up in the list of drives that you can install. This is due to it being in RAID, so I do some more reading. After noting the model of my NVMe (Toshiba THNSN5256GPUK) and diving into that topic, I found two possible drivers:

1. Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) — according to Dell and Notebook Review forums, I should download the latest IRST package, extract the AHCI drivers, and load them during the Windows install.

2. OCZ (Toshiba) NVMe Drivers (scroll down to H) — according to an old thread here, these drivers work for the older Toshiba THNSN5256GPU7 and I'm reading that they will not work for my drive.

So before I switch over to AHCI and destroy the factory Windows 10 image, I have some questions:

• Do I even need to install AHCI drivers? If so, which one is recommended? According to most things I've read, if I go with IRST drivers I should install the ONLY the AHCI drivers and none of the IRST software... but I've also read that Windows 10 includes a native NVMe controller, making 3rd party drivers unnecessary.

• There are various reports of IRST drivers not working (BSODs, instability, etc.); how true are these?

• Any other tips for a clean Windows / Linux install?

Edit: just noticed that code brackets make this post really hard to read when not in RES night mode so I've removed them.