WIndows Reinstall Switch From RAID to AHCI

My experience with any changes that affect a drive, particularly a boot/system drive, are best done fully clean so be sure to back up/save any data you created or that exists nowhere else to a different drive/location first.

I believe the change from RAID to AHCI will require a new system partition to be written to the SSD to get it to boot, but not sure. The way to save your current Windows OS is to make yourself a bootable USB flash drive of Kyhi's recovery drive:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

Once you are sure you can boot into Kyhi's recovery drive, boot into your normal Windows 10 in safe mode. Uninstall the RAID hard drive controller in device manager. Shut down the computer - do not restart. Change the drive controller to AHCI mode in BIOS/UEFI. See if the computer will boot from the SSD. I doubt it will, but if it does, restart Windows 10 in normal mode and you should be good to go. You'll have to manually install the Intel IRST driver for the Standard AHCI Controller that will appear in device manager.

If the computer won't boot from the SSD, boot it from Kyhi's recovery tools USB flash drive or DVD. Make a backup image copy of your Windows 10 OS partition onto an external storage using Macrium Reflect. The Windows 10 you are creating a backup of should still be in the state to boot into safe mode with the previous drive controller deleted. Boot from a Windows 10 USB flash drive or DVD (see my quotes in the middle of Kyhi's OP for a helpful hint) and clean install Windows 10 to the SSD to establish the proper system partition to boot from it.

Then go back to Macrium Reflect and restore your old Windows 10 OS partition right over the top of the new one. Run the utility to fix Windows startup problems in Macrium Reflect. Then reboot from the SSD, turn off Windows 10 safe mode and it will pick up a standard AHCI drive controller.

Then you will have to go back and manually install the Intel IRST driver for the disk controller in AHCI mode and you're good to go.

ArazelEternal said:

Okay, I did all of that. Got the system back up and running with the SATA mode set to AHCI rather than RAID, everything seems to be working great. However, Samsung Magician still says that the SSD is not supported contrary to both the online documentation and the documentation it came with. Im starting to wonder if this isnt some Dell specific version of the PM830, or a version of it that just isnt supported.

Did you replace the standard AHCI controller with Intel's driver?

ArazelEternal said:

I didn't do so manually. I downloaded the driver from intels website and tried the installer. It threw an error saying "This platform is not supported. I'll try updating it manually when I get home. I'm on the road at the moment.

Then you have to download the next lower version.



After you get the 14.8.0 driver installed, then do Update Drivers again and this time select the automatic update option and you will get 14.10.0 from Windows Update.