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77851
May 7th, 2015 20:00
Dell XPS: How to enable Intel's RST CTRL+I option when booting?
I have a Dell XPS L521X notebook. It came with a 64GB mSata drive and a 1TB mechanical drive. There was a CTRL+I option to get into the Intel RST Legacy Option ROM. The drives were configured for RAID and the 64GB mSata drive was being used as the cache drive.
The 1TB drive failed so I had to replace it. In the CTRL+I config menu, there was an error about mismatched cache so I deleted the RAID set, thinking that I would be able to re-enable it afterwards. I rebooted and have not seen the CTRL+I option since!
I installed a fresh copy of Windows and am able to setup the mSata drive as an RST cache drive, by setting the SATA mode in the BIOS to "Intel Smart Response Technology".
This method for enabling the Intel RST acceleration only allows you to use a max of 32GB on the cache drive. I want to go back to the original Dell RAID config that used the entire 64GB mSata drive. It also seems that this method uses software RAID (RST drivers) and the original used hardware RAID.
Things to note...
- under the original Dell config, the mSata drive did not show up in the Device Manager (as expected with hardware RAID)
- under the new config, the mSata drive does show up in the Device Manager
Things I've tried...
- booting with blank, unpartitioned drives
- removing the battery, and the CMOS battery (to completely clear the BIOS settings)
- various partitioning schemes as noted in several forums (like creating a small, OEM partition on the mSata drive)
- booting in "AHCI" and "ATA" sata mode then back into "Intel Smart Response Technology" mode
- flashing the BIOS with the latest version, flashing with the oldest version (that I could find)
- booting without the mSata drive, then with it connected again
There doesn't seem to be any way to trigger the Intel Option ROM to start showing the CTRL+I option again so I can reconfigure the hardware RAID setup.
Any ideas on how to re-enable the CTRL+I option or to recreate the original RAID info on the mSata drive?
Thanks,
itahlo
1 Message
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January 11th, 2016 12:00
Please, I have the same problem! Someone help me.
chuck1000
2 Posts
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January 11th, 2016 16:00
Itahlo,
In the end, I had to live without a method to restore the CTRL+I boot prompt. Dell tech support said that it could only be done by them if I were to send the system back.
With most raid controllers, the raid config info is stored on the controller and on the drives. Most raid bios' will give you a setup prompt regardless of the drives you do/don't have plugged into them and regardless of the drives' current raid state. If the drive config doesn't match the controller's config it will usually report a "foreign" config.
The XPS raid bios seems to only prompt if it detects the proper raid config on the msata drive. I tried creating a similar raid config on the msata drive using a different Dell raid controller with no luck. It didn't trigger the raid bios prompt.
One post in another forum suggested that all I needed to do was to copy the raid config from a working msata drive to the drive in question. I have several other working XPS's but unfortunately, I couldn't find any software that could properly clone/copy the drive. I tried EaseUS Todo Backup which is marketed as Raid Clone Software. I've used it to successfully clone raid drives created with a Dell PERC controller, but it didn't seem to work for my XPS msata drive.
In my case, my msata drives were mostly 128GB in size. I ended up formatting and using them as the Windows boot partition. We normally isolate data on a separate D: partition anyways. With using a simple stopwatch I determined that this config was faster than my other XPS's still using the msata cache config. Bootup time was allot faster and post-login seems faster than with the cache. Both methods are, of course, much faster than without the msata drive at all.
Sorry I couldn't provide you a solution. I can't believe this hasn't happened to allot of XPS customers.