GT683R 2X500 MB Raid to 1 SSD 1 HDD

Who out there has upgraded one of their Raid 0 HDDs and installed a SSD for their OS and common programs to boost speed?

I was able to remove the drives and install a clean version of Windows 7 on an Adata 120 GB SSD. But I cannot get the second drive to work. As soon as I put a second drive in, the boot time goes from a few seconds to 40+ seconds and the drive is not recognized and cannot be initialized due to an "I/O error."

Bios is set to ACHI (not raid).

Any thoughts, comments or suggestions?

I think I will need to flash the bios to the non-raid version of the laptop. Does anyone have a link for the proper way to make a MSI bootable usb flash drive so that I can flash the bios?

 

What happens if you put both drives back in? If it works then you can just go into raid manager and break up the array (which is what you should have done anyway).

 

My mistake for not putting enough information down the first time.

I kept the array to make sure I had something to go back to if the SSD load did not work.

After I loaded the OS on the SSD and found everything to be stable and working well (with only the SSD and one empty drive bay) I then tried a second drive. When I got the I/O error I decided to load the drive in an external usb enclosure and wipe the array. The laptop saw the usb drive and initialized it and reformatted the drive and reset the MBR. When I then put the reformatted drive back in the laptop I got the same symptoms as when it still had half the array on it: Long boot time, unrecognized drive and an I/O error when I try to initialize it.

The drive state of the HDD is not the issue.

 

What happens when you swap the drives, maybe a problem with the sata port?

 

After installing the ssd, you should have removed it, reset bios to raid, put both original drives back in and undid the raid in the raid bios.

When you connected the drive through usb did you delete the volume and then reformat?

 

Yes. The HDD is now just a normal 500 GB drive with nothing on it but the MBR. But when it is plugged in it messes up the laptop boot as I described before.

My thoughts are that the bios (even if set to ACHI) is trying to use the 2 drives as an array and it gets lost.

I think I figured out what I need to do. I think that the Intel Rapid Storarge Technology (raid controller) is still set to raid and I need to set the bios to raid so I can open the controller GUI and then use that to undo the raid and then change the bios out of raid.

 

Yes, I think you are right.

 

You may just need to "clean" your 500GB 7,200 RPM drive. See Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command - Windows 7 Forums

We have found that when you break the RAID 0 and don't clean the drives you will end up just as you have described.

 

Which is what I suggested in the first place

 

Sorry Meaker, I didn't see where you suggested using the "clean" command in DOS DISKPART.

Hmmm, I still don't see it after reading any of your posts.

 

Breaking up the raid array in the raid command software should have done the trick.

 

Our experience building several of the MSI GT780R and MSI GT683R has taught us that breaking the array does not always work. Doing the "clean" in DOS DISKPART always works.

 

Even when done within the raid manager and then formatting the disks in there too? Interesting. Have you submitted a bug report to intel?

 

My thanks to all for the suggestions. It was Meaker's comment with the words "raid manager" that hit me when I reread it for the second or fifth time. That caused a RTFM moment and I then realized that I had never used the raid manager and only the Bios setting.

I remounted the 2 x 500 GB drives - reset the bios to raid - rebooted - started Raid Manager - Broke the Array - mounted 1 SSD and 1 HDD - reset bios - rebooted..... The boot worked and I could initialize the HDD as a stand alone disk. Problem solved.

Thanks again guys. This is a great forumn. You are all a great resource and very helpful - I appreciate it.