Swapped HDD for SSD, now boot issues

Mad Badger

Mad Badger

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So the Sandisk 960Gb SSD is safely installed, when I boot, the 32Gb mSATA card (which was running as a cache next to the old HDD if I understand right) now shows up as a RAID device & Intel Rapid storage technology is nagging me to run the configuration utility.

I haven't a clue what this means, the machine boots up quickly after the initial hesitation on this question. If I pull the mSATA card will this speed up my boot time, or is there an option in the BIOS I need to enable?

Help!
 
Wild guess, is BIOS set to Raid?
 
Is it a laptop, desk top?. Make and model no please.
 
Dell XPS15 L521X laptop, getting confused by various BIOS options.....
 
What does it say under data options in BIOS?

If you OS is on the ssd, might be worth disconnecting the msata.
 
I have a Dell XPS 15, though mine is the 9350, that came with HDD & 32GB mSATA cache. I swapped the mSATA for a 256GB card, then installed windows on that.

There's 2 things you'll want to do:
Firstly uninstall the intel rapid start software that uses the 32GB card as a cache - you don't need it any more.

Then you will want to make the new drive the first drive that the machine tries to boot from, your machine presumably defaulting to the mSATA drive. The Dell bios isn't helpful identifying which drive you're using, but if you go to the boot page then you should have a 'first boot device & second boot device selection - choose the second offering for the first boot device, then save your settings.

If you can see the cache drive in windows explorer then you may as well format it & use it as spare space, otherwise just remove it & keep it safe in case you ever want to revert the machine with the original hard drive.
 
@sep9001 The SATA hard drive controller is set to raid. Other options are ATA or AHCI. There's a warning that I'll need to reformat if I apply AHCI. Also it says Intel smart response technology is turned on, which automatically sets the BIOS to RAID mode.

So if I turn ISRT off and set SATA mode to AHCI I should boot without a raid setup prompt but would need to format the SSD again, yes?
 
If you are not using the 32gb hd, unplug it. Set the BIOS to ahci and boot. See if this works.
If you want to use both you will have to do as AM has said above.
 
Last edited:
Set bios to AHCI, couldn't find boot device, no problem, plugged in USB drive with W10 installation and have just started W10 reinstall, should be OK, thanks everyone
 
Hmm SSD only working at 3Gb, was 6 last installation, could it be chipset drivers?
 
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