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Intel® RST, RAID
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Help turning off IRST drive acceleration

KArbu
Novice
4,007 Views

I apologize in advance for my lengthy message, but I wanted to provide as much detail as possible with the hopes that someone might be able to help me resolve my problem with Intel RST.

My PC hardware is standard for using IRST – a hard drive plus the caching SSD. Here are a few details:

Intel Core i7 3770 CPU

Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H motherboard

WD VelociRaptor 300GB with a Crucial SSD

We lost power two weeks ago, and I wasn't able to get all PCs turned off before they went down hard. One of the machines (Windows 8) that went down hard, when it was rebooted a message came up stating that the BIOS values were being reset to the defaults. At that time, I didn't think about the RAID setting for the drives not being set properly. The PC booted and seemed to function normally, and I continued to use it for remainder of the week.

The following Monday, I shut down this PC and when rebooted, it wouldn't come up correctly. I now recognize that this was due to the drive type defaulting to AHCI instead of RAID. It appears that running it in the wrong mode caused some file corruption. After a bunch of repair attempts, using the Windows tools, trying to roll back to an earlier restore point, and moving the hard drive to another machine to do a disk check -- I was finally able to get it running again. However, I had to disconnect the SSD in order to make it work, and anytime I reconnect the SSD, it doesn't boot.

The problem is with the accelerated drive feature in Intel RST. I now have the machine running, but I want to free myself from IRST acceleration and want to use an SSD as the primary drive. Here are the problems I have run into:

  • IRST is running and it appears in the system tray. Launching IRST fails with this error message "An unknown error occurred while running this application. If the problem persists, please restart your computer or try reinstalling the application."
  • I have tried to uninstall IRST, but it won't let me stating the drivers are in use.
  • I have tried to install a newer version compatible with Windows 8, but this fails.

I have tried to gain access to the IRST "ROM" that comes up before the OS, but using "Ctrl-I" never works, so I can't reset the disks to non-RAID. I don't know if it is running or not because I have the RAID turned off.

After reading a discussion about a related problem, I thought I should turn the RAID setting back on in the BIOS, but the won't boot in this mode. I went back to AHCI and after a disk check, it booted back up.

I'm hoping to avoid reinstalling the OS on a fresh drive. I would sincerely appreciate any help freeing myself from the IRST accelerated drive configuration.

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KArbu
Novice
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I worked with this machine again today and was able to make some progress.

  1. I changed the primary drive back to RAID in the BIOS.
  2. I plugged in the Corsair SSD.
  3. This enabled me to get into the IRST BIOS control. Once in this control panel, it showed me that there were no RAID drives present.
  4. I went back into the BIOS are set the primary drive to AHCI -- since this is the only way it will boot now.
  5. I moved the Corsiar to a different SATA connector and everything booted without any issues.

I assume that it would be possible to rebuild this RAID configuration with the IRST BIOS, is this correct? I'm not sure I want to go back to the RAID setup as I'm planning on switching to a larger SSD as the primary drive -- but I like to know how to repair my IRST accelerated drive if necessary.

The other issue that remains is that running the IRST application (with the drive set as AHCI) still results in the error message "An unknown error occurred while running this application. If the problem persists, please restart your computer or try reinstalling the application." Any idea how to make IRST happy?

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idata
Employee
1,838 Views

Hello Keith-A,

Thank you for joining the Rapid Storage Technology Community. I am sorry to hear you are having issues with this matter.

It would be possible to rebuild the RAID structure, but your SATA mode has to be set to RAID, for this you will need to re-install your operating system, and then proceed to configure it from the Intel® RST software. Once your SATA mode is set to RAID the acceleration option should be available to be enable as well. To repair your SSD in order to use it as the primary drive, my recommendation is to run a low level format for it to delete any RAID structure remaining on the SSD. Remember that only mechanical drives can be accelerated.

For the other issue, try re-installing your current RST version, this in case there is a file missing and is not allowing to uninstall it. Once done, try one more time uninstalling the tool.

Regards,

Amy C.

KArbu
Novice
1,838 Views

Amy,

Thanks for the welcome and informative reply, this was very helpful. I was able to install a newer version of Intel RST and it reports that everything is operating normally in the non-RAID mode. I have also formatted the SSD and this is now available as a simple drive to use.

When the Intel RST accelerated drive was working correctly, it was great and it provided a real speed improvement. But I've now had two machines experience similar problems with drive corruption, and the only solution was to disable the RAID and run without the drive acceleration. I still have one machine running with the drive acceleration, but I am worried that this will fail at some point.

Thanks again.

-Keith

idata
Employee
1,838 Views

Sure Keith, I am glad to hear it was helpful. Hopefully the other machine won't fail, but in case it fails we could take a look at it.

If you have more questions, please let us know.

Regards,

Amy C.

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KArbu
Novice
1,838 Views

Amy,

There is one last problem that I'd like to resolve. As I mentioned, Intel RST is now running with no errors, and I've verified that both the HD and SSD are in non-RAID mode according to the IRST ROM tool. However, when I put the SSD in SATA port 1, where it was previously in the RAID setup, the machine won't boot. If I move this over to any other port, then everything is okay. I'd like to use port 1 as this has a transfer rate of 6 Gb/s instead of 3 Gb/s.

I know it is possible to have two non-RAID drives in port 0 & 1, as I have this configuration on another identical machine. But there seems to be some lingering connection to the IRST accelerated drive. I have reformatted the SSD as a normal drive and works fine as long as it's not in SATA port 1.

I also tried putting a different SSD in port 1, and it will boot okay and the drive is visible in the BIOS, but it can't be seen with the disk manager.

I'm really close to having this all working correctly, and would like to resolve this last problem. Any idea what is necessary to get this to work?

 

-Keith
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idata
Employee
1,838 Views

Keith, based on your motherboard specification the SSD should work on any SATA port, the only difference you should get is regarding the speed. So, I am thinking this could be related to hardware, check some of my suggestions below:

  1. Try a different SATA cable.
  2. If your other computer has the same exact hardware, test the SSD that is not booting on that computer and use the same port that the one you were using.

These two things could help us to diagnose if this is a hardware issue.

Regards,

Amy C.

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KArbu
Novice
1,838 Views

Amy,

Thanks again for your reply. I haven't had the chance to swap the SSDs yet, but should be able to take care of this tomorrow and will report back the results.

Best regards.

-Keith

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idata
Employee
1,838 Views

Keith,

Sure, let me know how it goes.

Regards,

Amy C.

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KArbu
Novice
1,838 Views

Amy,

Well I tried all different configurations and swapped in different Corsair SSDs in SATA slot 1, and I couldn't ever get this SSD to be visible in this slot. I also tried different SATA cables. The drives were always visible in the BIOS, but not once the OS was up.

I started looking into what goes on during the OS boot process, and also looking at the device drivers. I decided to delete all the of the non-visible drivers for the Corsair SSD and this was the trick. Once these were gone and a new driver was added, I could see the drive when it is connected to slot 1.

Thanks for your help and I'm happy to have this fixed.

Best regards.

-Keith

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idata
Employee
1,838 Views

Keith, thank you for letting me know this. I am really happy you found the fix.

If you have more questions, please let us know.

Regards,

Amy C.

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