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Add a RAID 0 set after Win7 is installed on an X-25M 80Gb SSD

idata
Employee
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Greetings to the group;

I recently did a fresh install of Win7/64 on a Dell O755 using an X-25M (port 0). All went well and was using the MS AHCI drivers.

I then purchased two 1TB Seagates and attached them to ports 2, 3 and set the bios to RAID ON. Blue screen with Windows recommending the recovery option.

I then DL'd the 9.6 RST package and installed thinking that would solve my problem. Nope. Same thing happens.

I can get it to boot again by going back to the RAID Autodetect/AHCI option in the bios (turning off the RAID ON option) and the two 1TB drives are seen in the disk management console and the RST console app.

But that doesn't help me much.

Is there a way to NOT have to completely reinstall Win7 to get the SSD to boot with RAID enabled in the bios?

Was this one of those situations that I needed to use the F6 driver when installing Win7?

Any workarounds?

Thanks,

Schmagagled

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RGiff
Honored Contributor I
1,076 Views

I have asked a similar question but have not found any answers , I would like to be able to set up my sys to have my SSD in AHCI mode and create a RAID 0 set for back up , but I don't think you can run AHCI on your OS drive and run RAID at the same time Or at least I haven't found anyone who knows how to do it , My board ( DX48BT2 ) even has a secondairy controller built in and I haven't been able to get that to work in RAID at the same time , when the OS drive is set to AHCI ???

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idata
Employee
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Okay, I got it done.

I stuck my Win7 OS disk back in and did a 'reinstall' (sort of). I had a thumb drive with the extracted RST 9.6 drivers on it and when the setup asked for drivers I just pointed it to the thumb drive with the drivers on it.

Setup said all my files and 'stuff' would be moved to a folder named 'Windows.old'. I didn't have anything on the machine at the time anyway because I was just trying to get the whole thing setup. Windows setup without a hitch and found all the drivers I had previously loaded for the video etc. I was asked for the PID key during setup and just entered the same key I had used during the initial install. There were no issues with 'activation' since not much had actually changed, and I guess the system knew that.

I then used the Intel console app to create the RAID 0 for the two 1TB HDs and the DM console to format them.

I just deleted the 'Windows.old' folder since everything had been transferred to the new 'Windows' directory anyway.

Long story short, it was just a reinstall, but this time I added the RST drivers during setup. Problem solved!

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RGiff
Honored Contributor I
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Are your drives in RAID running with AHCI and RAID ????

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idata
Employee
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Why yes. Yes they are!

The C: Drive SSD is aparently operating in AHCI mode but the bios is set to RAID ON (Optiplex 755). So the RST driver apparently does both and sees that the SSD is not part of the array and boots fine. The array (2TB RAID 0) is just for storage, and is not the OS partition. So the RST driver is allowing 'pass-thru' if your OS is not on the array volume.

I take it you're still having problems?

S.

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RGiff
Honored Contributor I
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Have not tried again resently , But when I do I am going to do RAID 1 For Extra space and safety . Not doing RAID 0 for speed.

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RGiff
Honored Contributor I
1,076 Views

My secondary controller is Intel/Marvell , I may have to up date the Marvell driver??

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idata
Employee
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I don't know how much you already have on your OS partition (software installed, etc.) but it might be worth it to run setup again (not a repair, but re-setup Win 7 over the top of your existing). At the time when setup asks you for drivers you'd point it to the RST divers you have unziped to a folder on a thumb drive, and then when the GUI returns back to ask if you have more drivers then you do the same thing for the Marvell drivers you've also put on the thumb drive in a different folder.

You should be able to create the RAID 1 array using the management app from within Windows (Intel RST console app). It's easier than doing it from the feature ROM pre-boot menu (at least I think it is).

Then you would obviously need to re-install whatever didn't get carried over from your previous installation. I needed to re-do my AV software and help Win7 find other drivers that were already extracted to the Dell\drivers folder. Other than that....pretty easy.

S.

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