HOW TO: Windows Installation Thread (includes SATA III, SSD Upgrade, RAID0 Discussion)

my advice, format your laptop and change to AHCI mode before doing that to ensure you get the max performance

 

Cloning will be full speed so long as it is aligned.

 

I didn't know about the SSD size limitation. That's really strange. I wonder if it is the Sandy Bridge mobile chipset, the older Intel Option ROM, or something Alienware did specifically to the R1 motherboard?

 

if size limitation is true then it would explain why it drops the 1TB ssd randomly during cold boots and why it recovers it from a warm boot. the 1TB drives need more electricity during the initial power up than smaller ssd's and maybe the motherboard cannot supply that much to the port(s). I remember looking at the white paper for power consumption for the 1TB ssd and I was surprised to see that it requires as much as a conventional hdd (or more) under load. at I think power consumption is extremely low, though.

 

Some computers, including some Dell models, do not have an AHCI option in the BIOS, only IDE or RAID. RAID will enable AHCI and that is the setting Intel recommends using for maximum flexibility. RAID mode set in the BIOS along with RST being installed includes AHCI mode for single drives and the drivers that go along with it. I have some of my drives in a RAID0 membership and one of them is not, but the single drives use AHCI. You can tell by the drive's functional speeds. Without AHCI the drive will run too slow. Even with only one drive installed you can still set RAID in the BIOS and AHCI will be functional as long as RST is installed. If you feel the need to use Samsung Magician it does not work for the drives in a RAID0 membership. Magician (and RAPID) will still work for the drives that are not in a RAID0 membership even though it is misinterpreting AHCI as not being active because of the BIOS being set to RAID. AHCI is working, but Magician does not know it is. But, it doesn't need to know because the drive functions as intended.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/731925-proper-ssd-bios-settings.html

https://communities.intel.com/thread/28589

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology User Guide


Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) and Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) on HP Elite 8100 Business PCs

About SATA Drives | HP Support

 

If you install Windows in RAID mode even if you don't have a RAID Array, Samsung Magician will not see the Samsung SSD so you can't enable the OS tweaks nor RAPID.

Furthermore, you mention in the above link that once can install in RAID mode, and if he needs to update the firmware he can simply switch to AHCI then back to RAID mode after the update. Without some registry tweaks, switching between RAID and AHCI in BIOS is not as simple as it sounds as you wouldn't be able to boot your system once you change the boot mode in BIOS without some fiddling around with the registry (correct me if I'm wrong)

 

You need to tell my system that... I am doing exactly this... The drive is recognized and Magician's features, including RAPID and all the OS tweaks, work fine on my Samsung 840 EVO. Magician "thinks" AHCI is not enabled and produces misleading information on the main screen about AHCI needing to be enabled for the best SSD performance, but it everything still works in spite of the false information. A single SSD will function as exactly intended without the BIOS being set to AHCI.

The limitation here is a flaw with Samsung Magician software, (as well as other consumer SSD software like Magician,) not the RAID feature set. Have a look... (bear in mind this in on a SATA 2.0 port, but the performance is still phenomenal).

Spoiler

You're partially correct, but there is nothing complex about it. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about how the technology works and many people assume there is some kind of mysterious performance benefit to using AHCI as the BIOS setting. On a system that does not support RAID there certainly is a huge benefit. The BIOS RAID setting is, in fact, AHCI. The AHCI BIOS setting lacks RAID support. Otherwise, they are the same technology.

As I mentioned, some of the systems Dell has sold in recent years have not even included an AHCI BIOS setting. The options were ATA and RAID. This is because RAID includes full AHCI support and RAID depends on AHCI features to function. There is no advantage in functionality one way or the other except that setting the BIOS to RAID, installing Windows and RST makes the system RAID-ready without having to do a simple tweak of one registry key.

If Samsung does not provide a DOS bootable firmware update like all of the other SSD manufacturers do, you have to change one DWORD value in the registry. This allows Windows to boot after switching the BIOS from RAID to AHCI. If Samsung does provide the ability to update the SSD firmware outside of Windows like everyone else does, you simply change the BIOS to AHCI, flash the firmware from bootable USB, change the BIOS back to RAID and you're done. It's not difficult at all. You can leave the registry tweak in place indefinitely.

 

Thanks a lot Mr. Fox for correcting my understanding!

I once read somewhere that even if you are not using a RAID array, dell recommends to set the BIOS to RAID mode.

Samsung really need to fix their buggy Magician and have it support RAID since most performance enthusiasts may want to utilize RAID on their SSDs even though it doesn't make a big diff. other than in syhtnetic benchmarks since 4K speeds are even a bit lower than a single SSD but let's not steer off topic

 

Hey, no sweat. The only reason I know is because I have done it already. Had I believed a lot of what is posted online and not tried it anyway I would still not know to this very day. So, I sort of just lucked into some of this, especially the fact that Magician still works. Had I not purchased the 840 EVO I would not know that either. There is so much wrong information on the web about RAID and AHCI it is not even funny. It's hard to know what to believe until you do what doesn't work and find out it does, LOL.

Dell only recommends using the RAID BIOS setting because that came directly from Intel. It saves customers from having to reinstall Windows to set up RAID and probably saves them from having to provide tech support to customers that run into serious problems trying to set up RAID on a system set for AHCI in the BIOS.

To be fair to Samsung, the Corsair SSD Toolbox for my Neutron SSDs has the same limitation, and so does the OCZ Toolbox for my Agility 3 SSDs. When I was running Crucial M4 SSDs in RAID 0 Crucial did not even have such software. It must take more effort to make the software RAID compatible. That, or they are just lazy and assume that because most consumers don't even know what RAID is they don't need to support it. The software is really nice to have, but not necessary in the grand scheme of things. At any rate, I am really glad I can use it with my mSATA.

I remember seeing some third-party software like Magician at one point a while back that works with RAID, but it was too expensive for what little value it offered. I cannot remember what brand it was now. I tried to find it a few a minutes ago.

RAID0 is primarily beneficial for blistering transfer rates on huge files. RAID or no RAID, it's really hard to tell any difference in normal everyday use, and like you have said before, copying small files and boot times RAID 0 doesn't provide any benefit, and may actually be somewhat slower depending on the file type and size. I mainly like RAID 0 for making a one gigantic volume of contiguous disk space from two or more drives.

 

Then If my regestry(msahci) shows 3 in "start" value, Do I need to change it to 0 for ahci works for my SSD? or I can just leave it on 3?

I've read all your answers carefully, and my understanding is I don't need to change anything for now (registry, bios setting or etc), right?

I just want my 2xHDD on Raid (which is original from factory) and 1xSSD on ahci. But only problem is there is no way to verify my ssd is working as ahci(someone said IDE was default to him).

thanks!

 

Changing the registry value to from 3 to 0 will make it ahci...

 

Sure you can tell because your SSD will be too slow, NCQ and TRIM probably will not work if your SSD is in IDE/ATA mode. If you have RAID enabled in the BIOS and Intel RST installed you don't need to bother trying to check because you're in AHCI mode whether you want to be or not. (Of course, this is a silly comment... nobody wants IDE/ATA mode, LOL.) If you use RAID0 there is no way you are using IDE/ATA mode because that does not work.

If you BIOS is set to AHCI and you do not have access to the Intel Option ROM at boot, follow the instructions shown in the quote below, shut down and change to RAID in the BIOS. When you boot Windows you can create the 2xHDD RAID0 membership with Intel RST. This is a "set it and forget it" task and you don't change it back later. Leave it set to 0 forever. Once the conversion is complete, reboot and then use the Windows Disk Management utility to either expand the volume to use up the unallocated disk space added by the second HDD or create a new partition and assign a drive letter to the unallocated space. This may increase your boot time slightly, but that's a fair trade and a slightly faster boot time does absolutely nothing to help your computer function any better in the grand scheme of things.

More info is in the first post of this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...es-sata-iii-ssd-upgrade-raid0-discussion.html

If you are still inclined to lose sleep over whether or not your system is using AHCI features, there are a number utilities that you can verify it with. If your active transfer mode is UDMA 6 then you're using AHCI. IDE/ATA mode, if memory serves me correctly, is UDMA 5 or lower. See this screen shot.

 

I never noticed it before because my game benchmarks have always been good, but after seeing mr. foxes disc benchmark its making me wonder if my system is set up correctly. The website lists the Samsung 840 Pro series SSD at half the scores I'm getting so I figured I was getting great performance. Maybe I'm just reading the results of the benchmark wrong?

I'm set up for Raid 0 in my bios, trim enabled ect., but my crystal disc scores are a third of mr. foxes. I have a samsung msata 512gb and a samsung 840 pro SSD 512gb in raid 0 and my scores are as shown below. I also have a 712gb (or whatever GB) 7200rpm data drive that i store my music , videos, pictures ect on. The Msata and SSD raid 0 are listed as the sata at 6 gb/s, the 7200rpm drive states its 3 gb/s.

Should I take my Samsung 840 SSD out of the Raid 0 Array? Would I be better off putting the 7200rpm drive in a raid 0 array with my 512bg mstata drive? I was under the impression that the SSD being in raid 0 would make the performance even better then when by itself. would that give me the read and write scores Mr. fox is showing?




The drive (samsung 840 pro SSD) is rated as below on its website. So i thought over 1k was good as a score for each until I saw the results in this thread.

This is from Samsung's Website
SEQUENTIAL READ SPEED
Up to 540MB/s
SEQUENTIAL WRITE SPEED
Up to 520MB/s

 

He is using ram caching.

 

oh ok.. I was gonna say, I was almost positive I was getting decent hard drive performance. lol

 

Yeah it's all well posting big numbers but it's how it runs at the end of the day for most people

 

RAM caching is good for hitting big numbers in disk performance benchmarks, but it is misleading. You are technically benching your RAM, not the HDD or SSD in that scenario. Other than disk benchmarks, the cache thing is fun to tinker with but it's not adding much value for most thing in real use scenarios. If you are benching while overclocking your CPU and GPU(s) to the ragged edge of stability for the sake of number-chasing, then RAM caching (including Samsung RAPID) needs to be disabled. If you have abrupt shutdowns or BSOD on a cache-accelerated HDD or SSD you can actually lose data and/or corrupt the OS very easily.

 

RAPID or any caching software has never given me any real world benefits other than fake benchmarks...... don't notice one bit of a difference with it on or off....maybe it's because I have SSDs which are fast anyway and 32 GB of RAM

 

To RAID0, or not to RAID0... that is the question.

For fresh, real-time example of single drive SSD versus SSD RAID0 performance, I booted in Windows 8, imaged my Windows 7 volume, then broke my SSD RAID0 membership.

I then benched it three ways for some examples. You decide what works best for you...

Single SSD Benchmarks:



SSD RAID0 64K Stripe Benchmarks:



SSD RAID0 128K Stripe Benchmarks:



Same as above, with Windows 7 image restored (loving that Macrium Reflect Pro):


Some folks say RAID0 boots too slow. I don't have an issue with < 20 seconds.
It's what happens after I reach the desktop that matters.

Windows Logon to Desktop Ready is 4 seconds:



From System Boot to Desktop is still very fast (including a dual-boot OS selection menu):

 

Bumping this thread for the newer members of our community.

 

Hi guys,
I am very confused by the intel RST terms...seems a thousand things are called RST.

Background:
I have RAID 0 (64K stripe) with two SSDs ( Sandisk Extreme II), that was done by switching to RAID mode in BIOS and pressing ctrl + i (the F6 method?)
Then I installed windows on it.
After that, everytime I try to install the intel RST software downloaded from Dell's site, I get BSOD.
So I gave up (had to reinstall windows every trials...) and ignored it completely since the rest of thing are running as they should
But then, from what I see on every google result, some kind of driver should be installed with RAID setup?

Questions:
Although it has been months and my system is running fine, I can't put it into sleep (after waking up, it becomes very slow and unresponsive, a reboot fixes it). Is it the consequence of skipping the driver?
And would I get a better performance out of my SSDs? The bro above with two samsung drives and Mr. Fox have much better performance than me. These Sandisk drives shouldn't be this bad, right?

Note: This array has been running for almost half a year and got many stuff in it


Any help would be much appreciated!!

 

Those results are not bad. Intel RST is Rapid Storage Technology. You should be able to install it fine, with or without the drives in RAID as long as the BIOS is set to RAID. I am not sure why you cannot. Have you checked to see if Sandisk has a firmware update for your SSDs? Don't use the version from Dell's web site. Grab the newest version from Intel instead. Here is a link for you to download version 13.6.0.1002 of SetupRST from Intel Download Center.

 

Thank you very much for the reply. Unfortunately, the latest driver still screw up my system badly.
After installing the driver and reboot, the system first stuck at "Starting Windows" screen longer as usual, and go straight to bluescreen. Then it reboots again.
At start, the intel RAID controller screen shows the two disks are normal, but it seems the content in that array is completely screwed.
I could not get into windows in safe mode, in command prompt, or anything. (will get stuck at loading some system file forever) Windows still recognize the array as a boot device, just cannot get past the starting windows screen.

The blue screen is as follow:

Spoiler

Now I'll try to search for a way to fix it without a clean install. Hope someone can shed some light on this!

EDIT: Fixed it easily! It turns out to be the SCSI driver being corrupted or some sort. At boot it gets stuck at CLASSPNP.SYS. I used the windows installation DVD to perform a startup repair, though I pressed cancel midway by mistake, it was still fixed anyway.

 

@hypersonic - Hmm... this is very weird. Never seen anything like it before. You could have a hardware problem since you have already tried this more than once. What about other drives? Same exact experience, or are these the only ones you have used?

Try booting into Safe Mode. If that works, it is possible it will correct itself. If Windows loads in Safe Mode, open Regedit and check to be sure the DWORD values are correct (see end of post #1 in this thread). If not, correct them.

Also worth trying, break the RAID membership in the Intel Option ROM (BIOS left on RAID before starting the process) and install Windows to one SSD. When you are finished install Intel RST in Windows and use it to create the RAID membership.

 

Thank you Fox bro for the advice!!
I've fixed the problem by using startup repair. (updated at the post above) Now after a RAID integrity check I will run crystaldiskmark again to see if the driver does any good.

 

Ok, it turns out after installing the RST driver, the performance becomes way worse than before. And booting now takes ages instead of seconds.



LOL much worse than the number I posted before.
"Don't fix thing when it's not broken" remains valid.

 

Wow, that is a big drop. Are you running UEFI and/or Secure Boot?

 

nope
just normal legacy boot as usual.
Preparing a fresh Windows install now

 

Be sure to use Intel RST F6 drivers if you haven't done that before. Install them during Windows Setup at the screen to select drives, choose the option to add drivers.

I've never seen the problem you are experiencing before. Very unusual.

 

Update:
Really WTF
Today I performed a fresh installation of Windows by deleting and recreating the RAID volume. This time, I loaded the F6 RST driver before Windows installs.
This is the result:


Why is it happening on me
I notice that with the RST driver, 4k QD32 read is much better than without one, but with the price of halving the sequential read is simply not acceptable. Sequential read and write are more relevant to my usage anyway.
I am done with that stupid driver. Looks like another reinstall for me here...

 

I have never seen what you are experiencing. I am almost wondering if it is unique to Sandisk Extreme SSD in RAID0. It could be something with the Alienware 14 RAID controller. It's very puzzling.

 

Phew...
Finally finished resuming everything without bothering with that driver
Here's the number I got at last


YAY
Proper number enthusiast's class products should have
Thank you Fox bro for the advices anyway

 

Bumping for new members of our community.

 

I have the same problems with Intel RST and my Samsung 840 Pro! I didn't know, what caused them, only that Windows 10 needed 5s to boot without drivers and now it's over 15s.

Here is a screenshot from a benchmark using Intel 13.6 RST:



In some Microsoft thread I saw a benchmark with the same software and also an 840 Pro, and his values were much better. Any ideas what I could do?

 

Trying to install the OS to the mSATA SSD with RAID set in the BIOS, but Windows install cant' detect the SSD. I also can't access the RAID BIOS (via ctrl-i) - that option never shows up.

Am I missing something?

 

Have a read on post #1 if you haven't already done so. Do you have the Intel RST F6 drivers? You need to install them during Windows setup. If you previously had or have UEFI without Legacy Option ROM, be sure that Secure Boot is disabled, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt, run diskpart clean and diskpart convert mbr (or gpt if you prefer that) on the drives before installing the F6 drivers. UEFI and Secure Boot reduce your flexibility and cause problems like this.

 

Got it sorted out, thanks.

 

What version of RST did you end up using to get the numbers corrected? Maybe that is something @Seraiel could try. Did you manually set the stripe size to 64K or 128K (the default 16K sucks for sequential writes).

 

I read a few more pages in this thread. Found one post, where Samsung said, that between 500 and 550 for sequential read and writes were maximum. I got those values almost exactly, so I'm guessing, that my SSD is in perfect state, and that the higher numbers of some in this thread, or also of the MS-technician I mentioned, must come from something different, like i. e. Rapid-Mode, 2 SSD's in RAID or similar.

Just for information btw: These are the values I reach with the SSD using the Intel 13.1.0.1058 RST driver and Windows 7. The Intel-version mentioned was a recommendation from someone that deeply digged into the topic and also tested a lot, and he wrote, that the 13.1.0.1058 is the fastest in allmost all cases (he was very specific, he wrote like "for this and that RAID-ROM, take this RST version, and he explained the difference between RST, RSTe and Intel Matrix Storage all in detail. When looking closely though, 13.1.0.1058 was advised for most common scenarios, like system not being from stone-age and system not being a 5k $ system from last week ) .

 

I did not install any driver.
Just enabled RAID mode in bios, press ctrl+i to create a raid volume, then installed windows on that. It works without any extra driver installed, so why bother?
And I set the stripe size to 64k, thought it's a good balance between normal operation and large file transfer.

The number he posted looks fine to me. Getting close to 500 MB/s seq read and write doesn't seem to have anything wrong. We don't know how much stuff is on that SSD while it's being benched

 

When I try reinstalling Windows 10 on my AW 17 R3, using Dell USB, it doesn't provide an option of clean install and if I chose recovery option, the OS gets installed on HDD(alongside SSD windows 10 installation, getting dual boot). How to configure settings so that I can reinstall windows 10 on SSD itself and not touch the HDD

Thanks
Sagar

 

Remove the HDD, install/recover Windows to SSD, then put the HDD back, copy any files somewhere else that you don't want to lose, then run diskpart clean, diskpart convert mbr (or gpt instead of mbr if that tickles your fancy) commands on the HDD.

It's not a bad idea to always remove drives you are not installing Windows to in order to force Windows Setup to put everything required to operate the system on one drive. When you have multiple drives, Windows setup sometimes does stupid stuff like making a different drive the active boot drive. With only one drive present, it cannot screw that up.

 

Hey All,
I do not know if this is the correct place for me to post, but...
I was able to upgrade the BIOS to allow Intel RST OpRom v11.2, 11.6, and 12.9.0 (And others) for our m18xR1. I also was able to updat the microcode for the 2960QM - last microcode update was from 2011 in the dell a05 BIOS. I updated it with the latest 2014 microcode! I've also included an Intel Management Engine upgrade from our version 7.0... to 7.1.8 and it does actually add a bit more support! If you'd like me to update the microcode for your system and specific PC, please let me know the CPU you are using and I'd be happy to do so. Also, the NEW OpRom's that I've added to the bios DO SUPPORT TRIM in RAID0. It's been tested and works. If you're interested, please take a look at:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...me-upgrade-7-1-80.787339/page-2#post-10190690
Enjoy!!!

 

Bump