M17xR4 no SSD caching in Windows 8?

Greetings,

I have just installed Windows 8 Pro on my M17xR4 and prior to this, I had a 500GB + 32mb SSD caching enabled. However, once I clean-installed Windows 8 and installed the Intel RST application in the system tray, I can no longer see the Accelerate option. I double-checked and my BIOS is set to RAID, although both my 500GB and 32GB drives are non-RAID volumes as I had to reset them back to non-RAID for Windows 8 to detect the drives during install.

My question is how do I get SSD caching to work under Windows 8? If I set both 500GB and 32GB into a RAID0 striped array, it appears to delete all the contents from the drives and the Windows 8 installer does not seem to be able to detect this RAID0 volume.

 

This might be of use: How to Enable Caching on mSata SSD for Alienware Laptops?

I don't think you want to set up a Raid Membership between the mSata and HDD as that would make the mSata part of the available space, which it doesn't need to be - that mSata drive is used only for caching, not storage. Did you raid the two drives together??

 

Thanks for the response stevie. No, I only made sure that SATA mode was set to RAID in BIOS. The HD and SSD are not currently NOT in a RAID array.

Basically, I followed the guide:

Reinstalling Windows
1. Ensure Sata mode is set to RAID in BIOS

- Check, this was on my default and I have confirmed.

2. Go to RAID BIOS and disable accelerate option for SSD (Only if HDDs are not detected while Operating System Reinstall) (Use Ctrl+I)

- I can't remember exactly what I did last night but upon booting into Windows 8 install, it did not detect the HDD. Therefore, I believe I reset both disks to a Non-RAID array. Was this a mistake on my part?

3. Initiate Operating System Reinstall - For How to Reinstall the Operating System on an Alienware System, please refer to this link.

- Done, installed a fresh copy of Windows 8 on the HDD. SSD is currently empty and non-partitioned.

4. Install all the drivers including Intel Rapid Storage Software

- Done, installed Intel RST driver for Windows 8 downloaded from Dell. However, when I launch the Intel RST application from the system tray, I do not see the Accelerate button. I can only view details about my HDD and SSD, but cannot set the SSD to accelerate the HDD.

To summarize, did I make a mistake in step #3 when I reset both the HDD and SSD to non-RAID? If so, how do I correct this? I looked at setting back to a RAID array but that appears to make the SSD as part of the HDD disk space, which as you mentioned is not what I'm looking for.

 

Hi, you nave to have the bios in raid mode for caching to work. If you installed windows in AHIC mode then you will need to reinstall. You probably did not see the drives when you attempted to install windows 8 because of issues with fast/boot or UEFI being set to ON?

To ensure windows uses the correct disk driver for RAID and caching you might have to extract the driver from the IRST package and set windows install to use it by selecting a diferent disk driver on the first load screen. Then browse a USB stick which you have already copied the driver to. This is the procedure needed for win7 but win 8 may be different - haven't tried it yet!

If you still see the raid bios screen before the alienhead then the caching should be working. You should not need to turn off the caching before an install unless you are changing the drive configuration. It's invisible to the OS and it will only see the prinary drive and not the cache drive - confusing!

 

As above. See:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=702568


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Okay, thanks for all the suggestions! Just to clarify, my BIOS was set to RAID mode prior to installing Windows 8 and I did manage to get Windows 8 up and running. Micky - thanks for clarifying that SSD caching should work if I see the RAID BIOS screen before the alienhead screen.

As a follow-up, I managed to fix the issue. It had nothing to do with my BIOS/RAID BIOS setup but a driver conflict in Windows 8. Once I had Windows 8 installed, I was overzealous and attempted to install each and every Dell Windows 8 driver, which was a big mistake. I reinstalled Windows 8 and only installed the following drivers (to my recollection):

- Intel chipset drivers
- Freefall sensor
- Intel RST driver (it will warn that this is an older driver, but intall anyways)
- Intel OSD driver
- AMD Radeon 7970M driver
- Create Labs Sound Blaster Recon3Di driver

This did the trick as not only were all the conflicts in the Device Manager resolved, but I was able to use the Intel RST application to accelerate my HDD using the SSD within Windows. I think another driver I had downloaded from the Dell page had conflicted.

 

Great news and some good info for the future - noted :thumbsup: