M17r3 AHCI/RAID settings

I receveid my m17r3 2 weeks ago with hd 6970 and single 320gb hard disk; this morning I discovered that it was sent me with RAID settings under bios and not AHCI; is there any performance and/or issue related? Because I tried to switch to AHCI but the system won't boot. If I change to AHCI and then with alienrespawn replace the OS with factory image does it work? Btw I have original dell drivers for my 6970 (8.80.6-101202a-109902C-Dell) and the FN brightness key doesn't work. Tks in advance

 

mines on raid, no problems

 

"No problems"...so far you'd have said ;-) , that´s the issue with RAID 0, even more if you plan to have your second HD as back up, container, data, and so on.

Bagongolo: the RAID config is done by default, yet if you do not mount the 2nd HD in the RAID configuration of your choice, your HDs will behave as if they were in AHCI mode. Only will you see during Boot the Intel message recalling you to mount the RAID volumes...never mind! just a second or two.

I have 2 HD 320G, 7.2K (default + WD Black), no RAID 0 nor RAID 1, but as if they were in AHCI. I know the features, advantages (and cons!) and speed of RAID 0 use, but I wanted my 2nd HD for data and do not want to jeopardize them in case of any malfunction. ( Shxt happens, you know...and I need those data as I use the M17 for working purposes, and the SSDs are not yet for me-minor probs and price)

Sorry, my English, not native speaker here, pal!

Vs
Zaragoza, Spain

 

Tks to both

Zaraneo: if I understand what you mean, If I put a different brand of hard disk (320gb WD green 5.400 Sata 1 of my old notebook) and I have RAID config then I will experience no problem as they were in AHCI mode?
Sorry for my english too
Vs
Cerveteri, Italy

 

no its on raid mode, but i dont use raid. so its fine

 

Ok tks, btw do you experience problems with the FN brightness key (I have 6970)?

 

i did once, but when i flashed the modded 04 it came back.. not sure if it was a fluke but its working now

 

Yep. While in AHCI mode (RAID without "mounting volumes") you can add your 2nd HD no matter if they are different (brand, capacity, speed).

Mine is with 6970 too, and so far no probs as described. The only thing is the "Aero issue" described in several posts, but I did again the windows experience index test, and so far I have not experienced any more.

Cheers.

Chi vediamo!

 

I run AHCI with no issues. I believe I read somewhere that you cant use respawn if you change from RAID to AHCI. This could be wrong but I used AHCI mainly as I read Intel SSD has issues with RAID.

 

When its on "raid" mode it still runs the SATA in a mode equal to AHCI when using a non raid situation... so there is no reason to ever put it on achi.

 

Except if you're impatient like I am, and you want to save that extra 3 seconds on boot up where it doesn't show the raid settings

 

Mine arrived in RAID mode. Creating the respawn usb stick and setting the system to AHCI and letting the USB stick boot and restore created a disk that would only boot if the BIOS was set to raid. I prefer not to see that stupid raid message so I set the system to AHCI and installed from the OEM Win 7 DVD that came with the system and manually installed all the drivers and software. This method did not create the restore partition. I have not tried to run respawn to create a new key based in this setup. I own Acronis and use that to back and restore my system.

Other than the annoying raid message at boot the two modes work the same when no raid sets have been configured.

Cheers,

 

Tks guys, I understand the different possibilities that I have now; btw I haven't got no restore dvd from Dell, just an OEM Windows 7 disc (on the label is written: Alienware Microsoft 7 home premium sp1 64 bit), and a M17r3 resource dvd (with drivers); the recovery dvd (it needed 2) I created by myself through alienrespawn.
PS: I also created an entire image with everything installed (games, prog etc) with acronis
Ciao