Program says my SSD is "inaccessible". Problem changing SATA

Recently I had to send my Dell Desktop PC back to Dell for repairs (It needed it's video card replaced). The PC was return to me completely reformatted, with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program on it just like before. Unfortunately, since the computer has been returned to me, IRST says:

"Acceleration using solid-state drives: Disabled

The accelerated disk or volume associated with the cache device is inaccessible, and the overall performance is no longer optimized. Please reconnect the accelerated disk or volume, or click Accelerate for more troubleshooting options." It also says "SSD on port 5: normal"

There is no Accelerate button than I can see though. What I can see, in the program's storage system view, are both my 1.86 TB hard drive and my 30 GB solid state drive, the same two drives I had before I sent the computer away, and both have green check marks by them, indicating that they're connected.

I called Dell support and they got me to go into my BIOS and change my SATA mode to AHCI. All that did was make it so my computer would not even boot to windows, getting stuck in a never ending cycle of error messages on start up before I changed the setting back. The support seemed puzzled after that.

I went online and someone else told me I have to reinstall my entire operating system after changing my SATA mode. The problem is I don't want to lose my free install of Windows 10. Is there any other solution other than reinstalling everything? I just want to be able to use this SSD to accelerate my PC like I used to.

dalchina said:

Hi, a 30Gb SSD is far too small for Win 10. The Windows folder alone is typically 17-18Gb, and an upgrade creates a copy, Windows.old- so that's 2 of them. Then there's everything else... + other partitions related to Windows.

Please confirm you actually mean you have 2 separate disks, and not a HD with a SSD cache - a SSHD.
SSD vs SSHD: solid state or hybrid? - Buying Advice - PC Advisor

You can do that by posting a screenshot of Disk Management. (E.g. type Disk Management in Cortana's search field)

You won't lose your right to Win 10- you can change your disks with impunity.

If you really have only a 30Gb SSD, I'd suggest you get a bigger SSD, and reinstall with AHCI and EFI enabled.

I do hope you had a full backup and HP asked you about reformatting your PC before they did it!

Best practice is to arrange to keep as much personal data as possible on a disk/partition separate to that containing your OS.

Windows isn't installed on the SSD, it's on the regular hard drive. The intel program is just to use the SSD to speed up things through caching. I am not sure if I have a SSD or SSHD though, but this PC is a couple of years old.