M17 R1 storage

Hey there everyone, I'm having issues with Windows 10 so I'm doing a clean restore. While doing so I was taken to the window where I had to choose where to download the copy and noticed my storage options were a bit of a mess. This laptop came with a 80gb msata ssd and 1TB hard drive. I have a 256gb Samsung 840 pro SSD, so I'm not sure where I should download my copy of windows or how to run my storage options. below are the storage options shown.
http://puu.sh/kduvm/563b35368b.jpg
http://puu.sh/kduxt/968b2a26ab.jpg
http://puu.sh/kduxY/e555fdbada.jpg

 

Hi there, yeah, you have a bunch of stuff left over from when disk 1 was the boot drive. You want to select drive zero. partition one for installing to.

Delete the partition on disk 2 - the 80gb drive. You want that unused so that it can be added to the D drive to cache it and get a good speed jump on that drive. As long as windows was installed in RAID mode and not changed when the SSD was installed you can use the IRST software that you will install later to use the cache drive.

If you have to change the drive mode in the bios back to raid it may not start into the existing windows. Not a problem as you use the win 10 utility to create a bootable USB (before making any changes) and you use F12 and start the clean install from that.

If you format the c: drive in the install then it will free up all the used space for your new install.

Unfortunately the master boot record that windows reads when starting is still on your 'old' boot drive. Along with all the bios boot data, and it WILL be being used. It simply sets the load to continue on the SSD. You can delete the partition (500 mb) and move it to the SSD but it's tricky and can end up with you having to start again. Best to just leave it where it is . When I did this I had to run windows repair 3 times to fix it onto my new SSD.

The recovery partition can be deleted and the free space added to the C: drive. If you install alien respawn it will detect a missing recovery partition and create one - well it used to but on win 10 who knows?

The 40mb partition has Dell utilities in it and gives you things like the PSA diagnostics that can be run on a hotkey at boot, of course I can't remember the combo, but if it works then that partition is working and usable. Otherwise it can be deleted and added to the primary partition on disk 1.

Good luck.

 

Thank you, my system is on ACHI mode, should I change it back to raid?

 

I would. It gives you so many more options later on and the overhead is tiny. Only problem is that windows will probably BSOD so you need that USB copy to install from - but you will get a much faster data drive. Great if you put something like your steam library on there .