Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
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Cannot enable SRT after reinstalling system

idata
Employee
1,839 Views

Hello,

I have got in front of me a computer whose behaviour regarding Intel Smart Response Technology puzzles me to no end. The machine in question, a Lenovo IdeaPad U410 (500 GB HDD + 24 GB SSD) running Windows 7 x64, is a few months old and has already had SRT successfully running on it. Howewer, a couple of weeks ago it got hit by some nasty malware and in the end I was asked to reinstall everything from scratch. I wiped both the SSD and the HDD, re-created the required partitions on the hard drive (200 MB EFI system, 128 MB Microsoft Reserved, everything that's left covered by a single NTFS partition; all of this using GPT), re-installed Windows 7 x64 (with Intel Rapid Storage drivers, exactly the same as during the first installation on that computer, read from a USB stick so that Windows installer could see the drives with the controller set to RAID mode), installed the whole Rapid Storage package... and now the option to enable acceleration is no longer there. No errors or warnings of any sort. it's just not there any more. What gives? The only difference in configuration is that earlier on the Windows partition ended 40 GB before the end of the HDD, with the remaining space left unallocated, to leave room for a possible Linux installation.

I've looked around on the Web and unfortunately have found no information that would help me. Having re-installed RST drivers - several times - has achieved nothing and besides, it seems most problems with SRT people complain about pertain to first-time installation, whereas as I have already mentioned above this laptop has already had SRT acceleration enabled on it.

Anyway, I would very much appreciate some suggestions regarding what else I could try to get acceleration running again. I have run our of ideas and unfortunately, the RST tool provided by the driver has given me no hints regarding why it doesn't let me switch SRT on.win

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5 Replies
idata
Employee
524 Views

The plot thickens... I decided to see what would happen if I shrank the Windows partition by 40 GB - and voila, the "accelerate" option appeared again. To make things even more interesting, it remained available even after I'd resized the partition back to its full size...

Anyway, I then switched acceleration on, using enhanced mode and the whole SSD. Now Windows does not even start, not even in repair mode. Looks like I'll have to tear the RAID array down - and given this laptop doesn't seem to let one enter RAID config at boot time, I will have to do this the hard way i.e. manually from a Linux rescue CD.

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Allan_J_Intel1
Employee
524 Views

In order to recover acceleration option, you needed to wipe off SSD performing low level format, this will clean metadata and any structure previously created. You should see acceleration button enabled again.

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MBoon2
Beginner
524 Views

That worked for me. To "low level format," I did

diskpart

list disk

select disk # (0 for me)

clean

Then I restarted the RST program and the accelerate tab was there.

(My PC immediately became unresponsive when I enabled acceleration though. Mouse moves but Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work. I won't hijack this thread with that though.)

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Kevin_M_Intel
Employee
524 Views

Hello MichaelBoon,

It is also important to mention that the OEM systems are always flashed with a specific image that has been designed and manipulated by the system manufacturer. This image also includes all pre-installed software in the computer with all the configurations that it requires.

If after doing the low level format on the SSD the system started very slow, I recommend you contacting the system manufacturer, in your case Lenovo, so that they can provide a copy of the operating system that was installed in your system.

 

Their contact information is the following:

http://www.lenovo.com/ www.lenovo.com

866-968-4465

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idata
Employee
524 Views

Unfortunately the suggestion to low-level format the SSD was irrelevant here - if you read my first post carefully you will find I *have* in fact wiped it, to no avail.

Anyway, from what I can see the problem which prevented SRT from being enabled was that additional free space was required on the HDD at the end of the disc (or possibly after the Windows partition - couldn't tell the difference with how the disc in question was partitioned). The original partition layout, the one for which SRT did not work, had the Windows partition stretching all the way to the end of the disc (I used gpt-fdisk under Linux to create that partition, as I used a Linux LiveCD to wipe the discs); on the other hand when I told Windows to shrink its partition and then expand it back to full size it still left 1 MB of unallocated space. The issue looks fully reproducible at this point: if I somehow allocate that last 1 MB the option to enable acceleration disappears, when I make that space available again it reappears.

The problem with Windows initially not booting after I'd got SRT going again was most likely related to a hardware fault of the SSD - a few days ago it stopped working altogether. In other words, it was almost certainly not relevant to the matter of enabling acceleration itself.

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