Setting up mSATA as cache drive for secondary HDD

Hey guys,

I have been trying to set up my 80gb mSATA SSD as a cache drive for a few days and it does not seem to be working and I am out of options as I feel I have exhausted all the info I can find. My computer came stock with 2 x 750gb HDD and the 80gb mSATA drive as a cache drive to speed them up. I installed an OCZ 120gb Vertex 3 drive as soon as I got the machine which of course broke the raid and broke the cache. I have been content for the last few months just using it with the SSD as my OS drive and using the 750gb HDD as my storage/game drive and the mSATA has just been running one or two games to speed up loading times. What I would like to do is leave the OCZ SSD as the boot/OS drive and use the mSATA to cache the 750gb HDD. I have followed all of Dell's steps and most of the other suggestions that I could find on the internet but no matter what I try the Intel Rapid Storage software refuses to acknowledge the mSATA as a cache drive.

The Bios is running in RAID
I have partitioned it down to the max 64gb size
I have blown away all the partitions and tried it unallocated
I tried a dell suggestion to turn it into a hibernated drive
I tried a fresh install

Nothing seems to work. My friend at work who just got his 17 has his cache drive set up and running from the factory but his are running RAID 0 still and. My question I guess is because I found something this afternoon that may suggest I can not set up the drives the way I want. That if I want to use the cache drive I have to set up the HDD as the OS drive and then cache it with the mSATA but not with the SSD as the OS drive and the HDD as storage. Has anyone else attempted this or got it to work?

Thanks for your assistance.

 

Hi man, everything should work as you want but I have seen a couple of cache drives have problems after caching is broken by moving the drive bays. I always recommend that anyone that wants to add an SSD to a cached system just put it in the spare bay and change the boot order. This way the caching stays on the HDD without any work needed.

Anyhoo, what you might like to try is to put a fresh partition onto the cache drive using disk manager, it might be in a unreadable state?

Chipset Software — Intel® Smart Response Technology User Guide

Edit: Just saw you tried that, weird. Maybe swap over the drives and change the boot order.

 

I will give that a try. If that fails to work I will pull out the SSD and put the spare 750gb that is sitting on my shelf in and try it with just the HDD and the cache drive and go from there

 

You could also try seeing if can be setup in the RAID bios by hitting the on-screen hot key before the main bios screen. It could be that there is a mismatch stopping it working? Also I'd try removing all partitions from the cache drive so it sees it as a bare bones drive since you get to setup the partitions in IRST.

Have you checked the disk driver? I should state 'Intel RAID'

Good luck

 

Just looked......it does not say Intel RAID...it is the damn Microsoft driver. I would presume their in lies my problem Can I change this after installing windows? it does not seem to want to let me install the Intel raid drivers just keeps telling me my hardware is incompatible. I presume this was supposed to have been done at Windows load, which I will have to do again tonight haha.

I feel like a giant DERP now.

 

Cool it's found! The driver is inside the IRST executable and should install with the package. I've seen this quite a bit and usually it's because RAID has been turned off in the BIOS. Windows then installs with a compatibility mode driver. In these cases changing the BIOS setting back to RAID results in a BSOD at startup

Since you said your BIOS IS in RAID (you do see the config screen before the BIOS screen?) then it should be just a case of getting them to install. During a windows install it sometimes does not use the RAID driver and you have to manually extract the IRST software to a USB stick, Then at the disk config screen in the install you have to 'select a diferent driver' and point it at the USB stick.

Easy thing to miss since windows install gets it wrong...

 

I will give that a shot. The weird part is it must try to install the drivers after the IRST package installs as the windows configuring hardware window pops up and the drivers are rediscovered and it asks for a restart but obviously it isn't working for some reason.

Everything is indeed in RAID and I do see the raid config screen so that is all good

EDIT : So I presume this can only be done during a fresh install?

 

That is peculiar -

You could try deleting the disk driver and select 'delete the software' as well. A bit risky but if it still starts you may find the Intel driver will install?

Edit: Just saw your update

 

I will try deleting the driver and hope for the best Worst case scenario I am re installing anyways haha...I am at work atm so I don't have access to anything but my cell connection on my laptop heh and I can't imagine updating Windows is good for my data cap lol.

 

Yeah, you could end up starting again. If you do I'd put the original drive back in it's bay and change the boot order at the start. Also prepare for win install by extracting the IRST install to a USB stick .

Good luck...

 

Hmm...so I re-installed and used the drivers at load up and it installed but it still shows the Microsoft driver being used for the drives....

I hate windows sometimes lol.

EDIT: Oh and I put the drives back the way they were when I got it, with the HDD in slot 1 and the SSD now in slot 2

 

Damn, sounds like some weird hardware/firmware issue. I was afraid that would happen . Did you try to go into the RAID bios and reset the drives?

If the intel driver install is complaining about your hardware then I am at a loss... sry.

Edit: Have you thought about if it might be the SSD firmware not accepting the driver or reporting it wants a different one? You'd have to take out the SSD and install win (again ) but it would take it out of the equation...

 

That is my next route but I have to wait till I get home so I can use my spare HDD and remove the SSD and storage drive. All of my games are insalled on my storage HDD and it would be a pain to wipe that drive atm and use it so I will have to put it off for a few hours.

 

Great you have a spare . If it works then just plugging in the SSD should break it proving out the SSD.

I take it you did go into the RAID bios and see what it says?

 

RAID bios shows all 3 drives as non-raid drives and the only option I have is to create a new raid.

 

Not anything to do with that then. You could just try removing the new SSD and looking again. See if it then offers you an option to use the existing cache drive? Just a dice roll idea...

 

Hah! success!

So I came home and pulled out the SSD and the HDD and stuck in my spare 750gb HDD. I loaded up windows and did nothing special, I didn't even install any additional drivers at load. Installed IRST and instantly it was like oh hey, would you like to accelerate this drive? cuz we can do that! :laugh:

At this point I presume something on the other HDD was preventing it from entering into acceleration mode. So any ways, I guess now that I have a few days off I will just reload all my games and be done with it because at least it is working now.

 

Great new, well sort of .

TBH from what I have seen the speed increase with a dedicated SSD against an SSD cached drive is hardly noticeable in real day-to-day use.

What model SSD was you using? It could be faulty or maybe just not compatible with the RAID driver? There might be a firmware update needed as well....

 

After I accelerated the spare HDD I put my OCZ SSD back in and changed the boot order and fired up Windows again ( The windows install that didn't want to accelerate my storage drive) , but this time I still had the spare HDD in that had already accepted the acceleration. Even though I am using a different Windows install from before I set up acceleration IRST found the drives and acceleration was already turned on. So I presume something on my original storage drive was preventing the acceleration and when I switched the HDD's out it fixed it? Maybe it didn't like something to do with the file structure or something? I had not formated the first storage drive because it is almost full of steam/origin games that I really didn't want to have to re-download.

So basically in the end, once I got it up and running on my spare HDD I just put the config back to the way I wanted it with the SSD running my OS and the cache drive now caching my spare 750gb HDD and I am not moving the more important stuff over from the original storage drive and then I will format it and it can become the spare drive.

I guess if anyone else runs into this then the solution may have to be formatting all your drives to be sure although I don't really know what could have been preventing it from working with data already on the drive, I wouldn't think that would have any impact on it. Either way as of this time my mSATA is now caching my 750gb HDD and my OS is running on my OCA SSD

Thanks for all your help Micky

 

Hey, you're very welcome, glad I could help

Yeah, like I said at first, I have seen people having similar issues after changing drive bays without turning off the cache in the RAID bios. Yours was a little tricker than most and I reckon it was some sort of mismatch between the RAID bios setting and what was actually plugged in? Windows then did not 'see' the RAID config and installed the compatibility mode driver? Dunno for sure.

Maybe finding two SSD's with the cache pointing at one of them (which is an invalid config) messed it up so it disabled. You reset it all .

Easy answer for anyone watching with a cached HDD wanting to add a dedicated SSD is simply change the boot order before installing windows and don't swap drive bays

Have some fun now