Smart Response not booting
mothra Apr 10, 2012 1:20 PMI have seen the other discussions on this, however my problem is a little different. I hope someone from Intel and/or the community here can help. Here is the history...
- New computer build: Windows 7 64, Asus P8z68, Intel i5-2500k, WD Black 1TB hdd, Intel 80g SSD
- Physically installed both drives, set SATA mode to RAID in BIOS (latest ver 3202), installed windows on hdd. No issues with install.
- Installed Smart Response drivers and Intel Rapid Storage (10.6). No issues with install.
- Accellerated hdd using 64g cache size, "extreme" option. No issues, everything working great.
- Continued installing other apps, etc... No issues what so ever.
TWO WEEKS LATER
One day the computer randomly powers down and attempts to reboot for no apparent reason, and is not able to reboot. I'm faced with the recovery screen with the option to repair windows or restart normally.
- Attempted repair, will not work. Error message indicates "Windows Repair Offline"
- Attempted to restart normally, endless loop of "loading windows..." then reset and repeat.
- Later I discover that neither of the drives can be seen, even from recovery console. I am able to get a command line and run diskpart however there are no drives, no volumes, nothing there other than my CD ROM.
At this point I attempt to switch the SATA mode from RAID to ACHI... which allows me to reboot the system, and everything seems fine again. Rapid Storage won't launch and I assume is now broke so I uninstall it.
From here I am stuck.
If I attempt to put my SATA mode back into RAID I cannot boot, can't see any drives, etc... just as before. Windows repair will not run (does not make a difference if I boot from windows CD or not). Switching bios back to ACHI mode will allow me to boot, as before.
If I attempt to install Smart Response again I cannot boot and cannot repair windows. Only by booting from the windows CD can I choose to Restore the system, effectively undo the Smart Response install, and I can boot again in ACHI mode.
I would have just re-installed Windows and crossed my fingers that it doesn't happen again... however in the 2 weeks that I was up and running I had installed quite a bit of software including Apache and some others that involve configuration, etc. Any suggestions, feedback, questions, are welcome... I really would like to take advantage of the Smart Response Technology, it was great while it was working.