Thank you for your response. I do have a couple of questions:
You said to use the M.2_2 (secondary) slot instead of the M.2_1 (primary) slot. Is that really what I should do? The secondary slot on this board stands perpendicular to the motherboard, and in my current configuration wouldn't fit with the other components installed--and it wouldn't look as good
😉 Where exactly is the setting for "AMI Native NVMe" support? Under the Advanced tab and under Onboard Device Configuration, I had the M.2_1 slot set to either Auto or PCIe (it also has a setting labeled "Teton Glacier" but I don't know what that is; a quick Google search indicated something related to Intel...)
I did create a new USB boot drive, since my old one was made several years ago. I didn't format it as GPT, I just did a full format in NTFS. The other settings (CSM and Fast Boot) I played around with because sometimes the SSD wouldn't show up in the BIOS/UEFI, and for a while it didn't show up in Windows (which is what it did initially). At the moment I have Fast Boot disabled, CSM disabled, another setting for Windows UEFI mode, and only two boot devices show up: the USB Windows installation drive, and my main Windows installation on my RAID array. Along the way I was able to brute force my way through a Windows install (it would keep BSOD-ing during the install process, and I would get a little farther until it finally completed). After it finally installed, I booted into it. Then when I tried to reboot the system to get back into it, it won't let me--just the same error screens I've been seeing all along. Here are the next things I'm considering:
Deleting my RAID array: I've been wondering if my RAID 0 array was causing a conflict, although I don't see how it would. I kept it so I could revert back to my regular Windows install in case I had problems, but I may delete it anyway and see what happens.
Reformat my Windows installation USB: this would be to ensure it's formatted under GPT, if it isn't already.
Anyway, I'm going to keep working this.