Need help understanding my Raid/ahci bios options


  1. Posts : 111
    Windows 10 Pro 21H1
       #1

    Need help understanding my Raid/ahci bios options


    I have something I don't understand and my story is a little long so bear with me. I recently set up a Dell Precision T3600 workstation which is working with a ssd boot drive (on sata3 port 1 (my optical drive is on sata3 port 0) and a hdd storage drive which is on sata2 port. In bios I have it set to operate in ahci mode but after the fact I also discovered that there is another option set in bios which is raid (sata mode) Originally I installed the intel chipset drivers as well as Intel RST. After doing a lot of reading about how the RST drivers cause so many problems I changed my ahci driver over to Microsoft standard ahci controller. I then went into bios and disabled raid sata mode. When I booted back into windows it would no longer see my storage hdd. Help me to understand why this is. This same secondary hdd worked find in my old system which had no raid and operated in ahci mode. I don't mind leaving it like it is as long as it works with no problems but is using a combination of both standard MS and intel drivers to control my hard drives a good idea? My thought is that this has something to do with the fact that this is a server PC but having no experience nor complete understanding of RAID I am not sure. Is it ok to run this configuration and if not how do I get the PC to recognize the secondary HDD with RAID disabled?
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 9,780
    Mac OS Catalina
       #2

    RAID is for redundancy. Changing things after you have decided to go with RAID for your data drives, whether it is JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) or files are mirrored across the drives, changing the options after you went with RAID, is going to cause you to have problems as you have seen.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 18,430
    Windows 11 Pro
       #3

    Assuming you don't have any data on the secondary HDD that you need to keep....

    With 1 SSD and 1 HDD in the computer, your SATA controller mode should be set to AHCI. If you changed from RAID to AHCI, then you will need to repartition the HDD. For your SATA AHCI driver, you should be using the driver specific to the chipset of your motherboard rather than the generic Windows 10 AHCI driver:

    Need help understanding my Raid/ahci bios options-capture.jpg

    If you do have data on the HDD you need to keep, then you will need to set it back to RAID, with the RAID driver it had before. Back up the data. Reset your SATA controller to AHCI, create a new partition on the secondary HDD, then restore the data back to it.
      My Computer


 

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