Inspiron 17R SE - Anyway to enter RAID config?

Anyone know a way to get in the raid controller config... to setup the 2 HD in Raid?

I saw only once that window, and i taught i was dreaming, but i never was able to do it again... and now that i have my 2nd Corsair Force GT (120gb x 2) i would like to set them up in raid along with the mSata 32gb and remove the 1TB HD from the loop, for testing.

I tried CTRL-I at boot... but i keep getting the windows F7-F8 boot options... i know it has to be done on bios config... i will try switching to AHCI mode... and see...

 

AHCI didn't do jack... anyone able to help out on this? Is there anyway to get into the SATA controller config like on a regular motherboard with CTRL-I?

 

If there's no option to change SATA operation to RAID, then you won't be able to enter Ctrl+I. Plus I don't think ANY Inspirons ever supported RAID. AHCI won't do anything because it has nothing to do with RAID (Advanced Host Controller Interface) allows for NCQ, hot swapping drives.

 

Ok... there is a way to get in and you can setup RAID config... just to prove it, here's the picture i took while i removed my 1TB drive and rebooted... i will try and setup my 2x Corsair Force GT 120GB in Raid-0 along with a 32GB other drive (Samsung mSata 32gb).



Will comment later on performance as i am now removing data on my existing partitions and moving partitions to a new drive so i can restore them on the RAID array. (Thanks to Acronis True Image cloning function)

 

Ok... learned the hard way that you cannot create a raid partition from that menu, so i will have to create my raid partition within Windows through the iRST window.

That sucks, this means i can't have my boot partition as a raid-0... let's hope i can see a performance increase for the rest of the partitions like for the D and E drives... more to come.

 

Ok partitions are created, and i am now transfering my files over from the original drives, thanks to my Drobo that stored them while i was installing those dual Force GT drives.

What i did, is boosted my boot partition from 50gb to 60b.
Reduced my Storage partition from 1TB to 100GB ( i was barely using 50gb anyway) and boosted my Games partition from 40gb to 60gb, but this partition is in Raid-0 as the most performance drive.

The data/storage partition is a spanned set of the remaining space i had left on my 2 Force GT drives and the total space of the mSata SSD.

More info to come on performance.

 

I am confused by your posts. Bottom line for the 17R SE laptop, can you have a SSD as your Windows boot partition (Master/HDD 1 slot) and have the 1 TB HDD in the (Slave/HDD 2 slot) as your storage drive + use the 32 GB SSD to cache the 1 TB HDD?

Is the mSATA hard coded to only cache the drive in the Master/HDD 1 slot?

If this can be done could you make a simple step by step to do this.

 

I'm pretty sure what you want is possible (I think I remember seeing another post on this somewhere) though what Rassal is describing is somewhat different. He's trying to setup a RAID 0 stripe with two 120GB SSDs.

 

Ok, as promised, here's the performance highlights of using 2x Corsair Force GT 120gb SSD along with the Samsung 32gb mSata SSD.

Of course, this configuration is better than the SSD + HDD and mSata caching, but it makes a total of 272GB total, instead of 1.2TB... so a compromise... but performance at a glance...

So to achieve this, i didn't do a full re-install, i managed to have enough spare drives, and i could use Acronis True Image to clone drives to what i wanted. But it can be easily achieved by deleting everything you have (even what's on the mSata SSD) and re-install everything.

So the Boot drive is a 60gb partition on the Drive-0, i installed windows on this one and it boots from it. This is the performance i have on this drive:



What i did after that, is to convert every drives in the laptop into dynamic disks, as i couldn't do any raid setup in the intel Raid controller as opposed as what i read (i wonder how Dell made that Raid-0 partition on the mSata drive anyway..., guess it's part of the caching stuff, which i dont use because it's faster for me with this setup). Once converted into dynamic disks, i created a stipped raid set (Raid-0) with the remaining space on Drive-0 and paired this with an equal amount on the Drive-1, which resulted in a 60gb partition in Raid-0 (software raid) which i have the performance highlights here:



I did this because Drive-0 and Drive-1 are SATA 6gb/s, and the mSata is only a 3gb/s... so i wanted the most performance out of this.. As you can see the transfer rate is DOUBLED and it's using the MAX output SATAIII 6gb/s can give... over 1000mb/s which is insane!!!

For the remaining space, which is the remaining space on the Drive-1 and the mSata drive, again, i used a spanned disk set to create a drive with the rest of the space, which is a little over 100gb... as my data partition (where i put games like Steam games) on it. Here's the performance highlights for this partition:



I like it like that, as my laptop is a portable gaming machine, i got plenty of storage at home, and over this, the 1TB hard drive was put into an external USB 3.0 to SATA3 enclosure which supports up to 1TB... so i can still use it, if i need more space... i got a SAN at home with 16TB of storage on it, so for me storage is not a problem, as i get everything i don't need on the SAN and i can access it from anywhere, so i could get the 272GB total i didn't really care... all i wanted was a super fast partition where i can do some video edition and this is where i get my 60gb partition for this... and some ultra fast game load from this. Hope it helps...

 

This is exactly what i had before, and it's pretty easy to setup... just have to get into the iRST control and enable caching, by default it will detect if the drive you try to cache is an SSD or an HDD, and it will only enable on an HDD.

So my 1st setup was the 1TB drive with the mSata as cache...

Once i got my 1st SSD, i setup my ssd in Drive-0 and installed windows on it, and put the 1TB in Drive-1 and told iRST software in windows to enable acceleration (caching) on the 1TB drive. So the SSD was not using the mSata drive, only the HDD in Drive-1.

Then my last setup, was when i got my 2nd SSD, so i removed the 1TB HDD and replaced it by the 2nd SSD, and re-worked everything... even formatted the whole mSata drive and repartition it so it could be used as a spanned disk set to extend my 2nd SSD partition.

 

Oh, and the dual SSD with mSata also gave me around 20min more battery time on the laptop...

 

I already ordered my 15R SE, but if I can change it to a 17R SE, I will be wanting to replace the 1TB with 2 512GB SSD's, so I will try to figure out how to do this once I get it.

Thanks
Alan

 

Let's hope none of those raid drives fail any time soon.

 

Not sure why people make such a big deal about that part.. If I have 2 512GB SSD drives in Raid 0, or a single 1TB hard drive, the failure of one drive is going to be an issue. I do backups, so I don't see any issues and the improved performance is well worth it.

 

I don't get why anyone (meaning your average person in non-specific circumstances) would ever bother putting two extremely fast SSDs in RAID. They're extremely fast as is, and CPUs and GPUs will be a bottleneck in anything you're doing with them long before read or write speeds become an issue. All you're going is doubling your chances of loosing data.

 

For me it's a gaming laptop, and i use Acronis True Image to back it up weekly... so i am covered. Anyhow, the super fast response i get from the SSD in Raid-0 is not topped by the CPU and GPU, in fact, it helps out the CPU and GPU process things faster since they don't have to wait in line to get the next texture loaded or the next video live streamed. For me, it's a win-win situation.

 

Two drivers that can fail means more trouble. Why didn't you got a better hardware if speed if all that important?

 

Because Alienware or Origin PC would have cost double the price of the 17R SE for the same exact specs... 2000$ instead of 1000$... and i would still have to upgrade the HDD to dual SDD...

So performance/price ratio is unbeatable for the Inspiron 17R SE... and believe me, i didn't want to go the Alienware route again, too much problem with my last one (i know Alienware and Dell is the same, but a lemon is a lemon, can't all be lemons).

This is the reason i took the Inspiron over anything else. It had good reviews for the time it was on the market, so decision was easy, and i don't regret ANYTHING in my decision. I like to take my hardware to the extreme, overclocking or not, and i know that this Inspiron isn't made for overclocking, but i can dismantle this laptop with Dell's instructions pretty easily, it's big so it will not be too much of a problem when playing around with it.

It also has a good upgrade path... you can easily replace hard disks, memory, wlan, msata. Keyboard is removable for easy cleanup. Screen is 1080p and very good quality (IMHO). And over the top, it has a Socketed G2 Core i7 CPU, which means it could be replaced at a later time with a more powerful CPU with same TDP wattage... so for me, it's a win-win situation for one large bill less... Enough?

 

Driver that can fail, i don't really care, i have backups, and it's only a gaming laptop, which means i have no sensitive data on it, only games, and games can be re-installed pretty easily.

If it fails, i will just replace the failed part, and re-install... i like to tinker with things, so it doesn't really matter to me. (never had catastrophic failures, was always able to restore from a backup, and this is the reason i use Backups anyway)

 

GPU might matter on the long run more than anything on a gaming laptop.

I have back-ups, but I care for reliable stuff very much. This is why I went for a Samsung SSD for example. But we do use the laptops for different stuff. For you it might not matter at all if something fails. For me it means some time to make it work again. I don't really have that luxury during trips, business or not.

I always do a double back-up. Some things just cannot be lost.

 

1. You say they are the same, but I guess you never had to recover something from both of them.

2. That is the problem, performance wise, not much gain in real life usage. Most of us don't do tests or move huge files over SSDs.

 

I have recovered data from RAID 0 configs. Also even smaller files can benefit from RAID 0 because the file is spread over 2 drives.

 

Since the 17R SE supports RAID, wouldn't it be simplest to remove the msata, replace the 1TB with 2 SSD's, establish the RAID 0 and then restore?

Obviously I haven't tried it yet, my 17R SE gets here next Wednesday, but it's a thought.

Alan

 

You have recovered data from SSD RAID 0? How?

 

1. Replace the bad drive
2. Reestablish the Raid Drive
3. Restore from backup

 

Heh, that is not a recover procedure, but a restore one. I was really interested as how you did it since I found on my own it's almost impossible on a SSD RAID 0.

 

Then let's say this. You're generally not going to "recover" from any hard drive failure. It's just so much better, easier and cheaper to just do backups and restore from there.
Alan

 

Agree. I have 2 backups with important data. Any drive will fail sooner or later. But it's only data, it's not the entire system since I use different systems, it would be quite impossible to keep things in order with all of them.

From normal HDD I have recoverd data many time. In some scenarios you can even do it at home.

Anyway, I understand that for some people numbers matter more and since the laptops are just for fun, it's OK.

 

Hi

Help! I may be missing something but whats the key sequence to enter the Intel Rapid Storage ROM on the 17R as shown in the first page of this thread?

 

You can't.

I found out that when you play around with the drives, like replace one HDD with SSD, it will pop-up automaticly when there is hardware change.

Over the top, you can't create a Raid array there either. Useless IMHO.

 

Hi

Thanks for the reply, for some reason its not popping up on mine (might be different BIOS version or something?)

All I'm trying to do is configure the mSATA drive I've added as a cache, BIOS sees it, Windows sees it etc but the Intel software doesn't show an 'accelerate' button for the mSATA drive (and I've tried a few different versions of the software)

Has anyone else had similar issues?

 

Hi friends,
I purchased dell inspiron 7720 17R SE with two 750 gb HDD installed with 32 gb msata for caching. Yesterday i purchased samsung 840 pro 256 gb ssd and cloned my c drive where os windows 8 preinstalled by samsung migration software. The cloning successfully completed and after that i restarted the notebook and it booted windows 8. But the f2 and f12 keys are not function for entering the bios setup. Again i installed the cloned ssd and it booted windows. After the to try to get the bios setup i removed the ssd and booted the notebook without os hdd. Again i can not access the bios setup. Then i installed the original 750 gb hdd , now the system will boot and says operating system is missing. I tried with both sad and hdd but still getting the same message. Not entering to bios setup to maket any changes. Not znle to boot from the win8 dvd and also from recovery usb drive. Please help me and tell me how to get the bios setup and boot from ssd or hdd.
Thanx in advance
Shashi

 

Hi friends,
Please give solution to the problem.
Shashi

 

i just got 2 ssd on sata 3 plot , and press ctrl +i ,but it doesnt work too .my bios is A16 edited version .there is a selection between ide ,achi and raid ,but only achi working ,i selected one reboot and it auto change to achi. did you enter raid config panel, and could you please tell me how to ? i m a chinese ,and i look over all forums in china ,but not one did that .and i have a poor english ,maybe some sentence not a good expression .if u have any incomprehension about my question ，please not stint your words .i m always look forward to your reply .very thanks ;

 

Looks like this was set up using RAID in Windows not through the BIOS.