Just did fresh Windows install on new drives, having some issues

Hello there, its my first time visiting this website after trying to do some research on my own. This site seems helpful so I'm hopeful you may be able to help me.

I recently installed two new hard drives in my laptop, one 250gb mSATA and one 500gb HDD. When I installed Windows, the option did not appear which let me configure my hard drives. By default they were set to RAID.

I have three issues/things I need to learn about.

1. Drive Configuration. Will having my SSD and HDD configured to RAID in the BIOS cause me problems?
On boot, a screen now comes up (one I hadn't seen before this new set up) that lists my drives. Both of them are listed as non-RAID. The screen lets me hit CTRL+I which brings me to another screen that lets me configure RAID. I have no clue what to do. Should I just run with RAID and configure it somehow? Should I try to switch to AHCI? I tried switching to AHCI in the BIOS, Windows doesn't start, and it asks if I want to run startup recovery. I ended up getting back into BIOS and switching it back, now Windows will start again.

2. I have been experiencing a boot issue. This happened before I tried switching from RAID to AHCI in BIOS and it has happened after. Occasionally on boot I will see a screen that says "Disk Read Error Occurred" "Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart". I do the command a few times and it boots. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all. Sometimes it happens and it boots up on second try. Sometimes its like 5 tries. I checked all the connections for everything I moved in the install (optical, HDD and the SSD slot) and they all seem fine.

3. BSODs. I got NirSoft's Blue Screen Review, and it shows this info on the one and only entry I have for the BSODs.

Bug Check Code: 0x00000124
Parameter 1: 00000000`00000000
Parameter 2: fffffa80`083718f8
Parameter 3: 00000000`00000000
Parameter 4: 00000000`00000000
Caused by Driver: ntoskrnl.exe

Could the Disk read error message and the BSOD be related to not properly having my RAID drives set up? I'm kind of hoping I don't have to do a complete reinstall, but if that is the best course to take I will have to bite the bullet.

One last thing, where do you guys update your drivers? The Dell website is not accurate, it recommends drivers for hardware I don't have, and it never updates the list so I have to manually search my computer for the driver to make sure I don't already have it.

Thanks so much in advance for all your help

 

1. If you switch, you'd need to reinstall Windows. Also, a RAID setup between those 2 drives will drop the performance instead of increasing it. I wouldn't recommend that.

2. Perhaps it got corrupted when you changed it. You could try reinstalling Windows.

3. The disk read error could be cause by a corrupted O.S or a broken HDD.

4. The drivers don't need to be updated unless there's an issue. The only one that needs updates periodically is the video one. It's posted on the site.

 

Don't do RAID between hdd and ssd. The performance will be greatly hindered by the slow hdd.
A screwed up RAID setup could cause that disk read error. And BSOD would certainly happen if the RAID setup is not properly configured. (e.g. wrong driver installed)
If you have installed windows in that RAID setup, to fix it you have to do a fresh installation.
You may want to leave one drive(ssd) alone in the machine.
Don't press ctrl+i when booting up. Instead, press f2 to enter bios, and change to AHCI.
If the windows installation media is plugged in (usb drive or DVD), have the boot option set to this drive. Then windows installation should progress. After that, set the boot order to the correct drive (ssd), then put the hdd back.

 

RAID of an HDD and an SSD, dude......so you wanna tell me you wanna let an old grandma drive that Ferrari of yours? it will only slow it down to a crawl. don't even think about it. HDDs get a 1 MB/S 4K Random Read/Write Speed whilst SSDs average a 30 MB/S Read/Write speed on the 4K files, which is the type of Files that Windows usually deals with most......don't even think about it