The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Second HDD not found when bios set to AHCI

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ICNMatt, Jul 19, 2013.

  1. ICNMatt

    ICNMatt Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    96
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hi All, I wondered if anyone had any advice.

    I received my Alienware 18 the other day and swiftly installed a new Samsung 840 SSD. I migrated over from the main (750GB and 64GB cache) fairly easily.

    After cloning, I swapped the SSD and the HDD around so the SSD would boot first. I then went into bios and set it to ACHI (from RAID). Upon restarting, the second (750GB) SSD had vanished. I went back to bios and set it back to RAID and restarted. The second HDD then showed up.

    Is there any reason why this would happen? According to Samsung Magician, it should be set to AHCI for best performance. I think on the new AW18 there are 3 HDD bays (4 if you take out the optical drive). Would moving the second HDD away to the 3rd bay help?

    All I need to know really is what performance (or feature) loss would I get leaving it on RAID? Or, what can I do to enable AHCI without losing the second HDD?

    Finally, is there a way to check that the 64gb cache is set up correctly on the second HDD?

    Thanks all!
     
    ICNMatt, Jul 19, 2013
    #1
  2. ICNMatt

    ICNMatt Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    96
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Hopefully these images might help show that both SSD and HDD were installed in the same caddy. I'm not sure if that's the issue?

    _MG_3757.JPG _MG_3761.JPG
     
    ICNMatt, Jul 19, 2013
    #2
  3. OtherSongs

    OtherSongs Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    113
    Messages:
    640
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    31
    If you have the boot flag on both drives set to yes, that might be the underlying issue.

    If you do, you can use the free gparted program to turn off the boot flag on the 750GB HDD.

    I mean, cloning does just that; cloning does not do any editing.
     
    OtherSongs, Jul 19, 2013
    #3
  4. ICNMatt

    ICNMatt Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    96
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    Thanks for the reply. I don't suppose you could point me in the direction of how to use gparted to unflag? I have had a look around but cant seem to find much.

    Appreciate it :)
     
    ICNMatt, Jul 19, 2013
    #4
  5. OtherSongs

    OtherSongs Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    113
    Messages:
    640
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    31
    You'll have to do some minor reading.

    Two relatively short thread started by at11. Most or all of the info is in them:

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...sometimes-crashes-my-laptop-error-report.html

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...orage/707601-ssd-setup-bootup-error-help.html
     
    OtherSongs, Jul 19, 2013
    #5