Abstract: The present disclosure, in various embodiments, describes technologies and techniques for use by a non-volatile memory (NVM) controller to discover an NVM device, such as an NAND device. In an illustrative example, the NVM controller obtains a bypass discovery sequence from a first component of the NVM device using the NVM controller, where the first component may be bootstrap memory. The NVM controller then applies the bypass discovery sequence to a second component of the NVM device, such as a non-captive or reclaim memory component, to access the second component of the NVM device. In this manner, the NVM controller need not rely on pre-stored ROM discovery sequences to discover non-captive NVM memory components that require vendor-specific bypass discovery sequences.