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SATA configuration Optiplex 9010MT
I bought this pc with one HDD, which is plugged in to SATA 0. There are 2 DVD drives in SATA 1 and SATA 2. The boot process seemed normal when I got it.
I plugged a second HDD in to SATA 3. When I booted up, I got a short RAID configuration notice during the boot process. (It booted successfully.) I looked in the BIOS and found that the previous owner had the SATA config set to RAID even though there was only the 1 HDD. I did some research and it seemed that the RAID config notice came up because the 2 HDDs were different. From reading about the SATA config screen in BIOS, it seemed that the proper config for SATA would be AHCI. So I switched it to AHCI but when I tried to boot up I got a boot error. So I switched the SATA config back to RAID but still got a boot error! I had to remove the second HDD in order to boot.
I'm using Windows 7 Pro and BIOS A23, and the options for SATA setting are none, ATA, AHCI, and RAID ON.
It really seems that there must be a SATA configuration that's suitable for 2 different types of HDD without setting it to RAID and getting the RAID config notice every time I boot up.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what my settings should be?
Thanks
John9010
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October 16th, 2016 18:00
I found the answer here answers.microsoft.com/.../4c94f678-6bd1-48a6-b871-8872c841023a
in a post by O. Bilal on 11-3-2010. I made the registry changes he suggested and it worked.
I bought the pc with a clean install of Windows 7 Pro (I mentioned the OS in my post) but I don't know if the BIOS settings were left over from someone who did have an SSD, or if they defaulted to RAID.
I wanted to delete this thread after I found the answer, but wasn't able to; and it may help someone else anyway.
Thanks for your reply.
RoHe
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October 16th, 2016 16:00
Version of Windows?
Is/was there a 32-GB solid state drive in this PC that's used as a cache for Windows? When an SSD cache drive is installed, you have to set SATA to RAID in BIOS setup.
Google for instructions to break a RAID array. But you may end up having to reinstall Windows completely. So be sure to back up your personal files on external media before attempting to break RAID and/or to reinstall Windows.