Help with SSD srive

Glad to hear it is moving along .

Shame re the windows disk, AW are gradually going 'vanilla' across the board. I have the dosh for a new one put to one side but with the dropping of AlienFX promotion in games and all the little things like the alienhead power button with glowing eyes, choclate slab keyboard, No grills - boring! they are going to have to wow me with the hardware specs. Roll on the next generation of GPU's that will be timed to match the OEM's new line-up .

First just to be sure you are in the right 'mode'. You should see a disk config screen BEFORE the bios loading screen. Whenever drive allocation problems occur the RAID/caching tends to break .

I suggest you delete all the HDD partitions, create one large one on the 1tb drive and delete any partitions on the 80gb SSD and leave it blank at this stage. Install IRST and it should offer you a caching option for the HDD. Set up the largest it allows (64gb I believe) using the 80gb drive and leave the spare space - it will also offer to create a single disk array using the spare space so ignore that ATM. Unless you wanted to add the spare space to the boot SSD then it's not much use except as a small extra drive- and this is a tricky and complex operation anyway. Job done. Chipset Software — Intel® Smart Response Technology User Guide

The intel software will install the correct disk drivers as well as the windows interface to configure it. It is in firmware so does not rely on any software to work. That is why you can also configure it before the machine starts up using the on-screen hot key - another option to consider?

I'm guessing you have a small dell OEM partition and the original system restore partition? Neither are useful to you now.

Watch out for an unknown device after you finish with the drivers. This is the HD Accelerometer and the driver IS available on the dell drivers site - just put in your service tag for a personalised view of what is available.

And another thing . To get any pre-installed (licensed) software such as Cyberlink DVD (don't know if this is included in the latest machines?) you need to register at 'My Dell Downloads' ( https://smartsource.dell.com/Web/Welcome.aspx?ReturnUrl=/web/main.aspx). Create an account at dell and you get a limited amount of downloads for the software. If you already have a dell account then you should use this. I have also seen problems with it working well with firefox. Last time I used it I had to use IE

If you install Alien Respawn ( http://alwdownload.alienrespawn.com/alwdownload-en.html) as soon as you have a stable working system it should detect no factory partition and will offer to resize to create one with your windows 'snapshotted' - if you want one. It's not huge and may save your a** someday .

Boy, I'm on a roll today, haha. Good luck.

 

hi mate

your on fire today.... thanks alot

i don't see the disk config screen or any config screens for that matter, im still in secure / fast boot, should i change that to legacy?

Thanks alot

Ian

 

hi mate

one other thing how do i delete the small partitions on the 1tb drive, when i select format it just format the big partition and leaves the 3 other small partitions... its that just windows as one of the small partitions is a recovery partition at 750mb?

thanks alot

 

That's a concern. It's a wall of text with the status of each drive on it. Have you changed the disk access method? Many SSD guides say to change the mode to AICH from RAID. This turns off the RAID bios and windows is installed with the wrong disk drivers.. I suggest you go into the bios and set it to default. Them set legacy mode, I don't know a lot about the win 8 specific options except for reading recommendations to not use them - like secure boot.

If you go into device manager and examine the SATA driver it should say 'intel RAID' for the description. IRST install will fix this but the BIOS has to be in the correct mode first.

If you installed windows in non-raid then you might be stuck. If the machine blue screens when booting then it is easier to just reinstall again. Without RAID you cannot use caching

You need to go into Disk manager and right click on the partition for options - delete

 

hi mate

all sorted, except i cant delete the small partitions on the 1tb drive. when i go into manage devices and right click the partition i want to delete i dont get an option to delete only help displays... so im leaving it as it is....

i now have it set up as follows

256gb ssd - boot drive
1tb - games and data storage
80gb msata - caching the 1tb drive

im happy camper now and its fast...

next is converting to a 120hz 3d screen. Screen and cable have arrived, just waiting on the emitter to come and i can begin... cant wait for a bit of 120hz gaming....

Thanks alot

Ian

 

Great news, that's how you want it .

Those partitions may be protected somehow but as you say - what you don't see don't matter in this case! .

Did you re-set up all the cache in the IRST program? Delete existing partitions on it? Obviously the bios is in RAID mode, are you now seeing the config screen as the first after a power up? I'm looking to find out if it is any different in the latest model?

Thanks, and project one completes and closes - or rather has reached the first milestone . You'll want to create a couple of backups if you haven't already? See if Respawn will create a new factory partition or use the existing one? Probably not as it's on another drive but you never know . And a USB one in respawn.

All the best

 

No need to wait really. The screen and cable are the hard part because you have to dissemble a large chunk of the machine to get the cable in and out. The IR emitter is just peeling off the bezel and plugging it in, takes like 3 minutes . THe 120Hz all by itself is such a massive upgrade without even taking into account the 3D , I would do the screen now and just add the emitter when it arrives .

 

Hi Mate

yep doing the screen tonight, hate looking at boxes on the floor and nothing happening.... never stripped an AW17 down before so should be fun, just need to make sure im careful where i take the screws from when im removing the keyboard.

ive posted on the other thread "aw17 with 120hz screen"

lets see what happens, fingers crossed.

Thanks

Ian

 

hi mate

the bios is set to RAID, and the 80gb msata drive is still split with 52gb showing as free space in device manager. im not that bothered and will never use it.

the system is still set to fast boot so i don't get to see the drive config screen, boots into windows in under 8 secs, lightening fast now....

i will change the setting and let you know whats displayed tonight once i have installed my new screen.

everything is working great, i need to create an recovery image for emergency's.... tried it last night and alienrespawn said its going to take 6 hours to create a base image so i stopped it and i will do it before i start to load anything onto it.

thanks alot

Ian

 

Thanks, that's interesting, fast-boot stops you being able to pre-configure RAID. makes sence if some sort of system state is saved for the fast-boot - I have very little idea of how it works other than it is some sort of hybrid startup using disk data and UEFI compatibility? I doubt it will make any noticeable difference with an SSD by turning it off - will be good to know .

Sounds like the original 32 gb is being used by the cache. Did you look to see if you can make it the full 64gb now the free space is open for use?

Respawn sounds like it is working as I expected - it's not a great backup program but for DR it's usually good enough. Main thing is to not install anything that could compromise a clean install, just drivers and any pre-installed stuff.

Good luck