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Inspiron 3670 - Can the RAID "ON" BIOS Setting Be Turned Off
First, I am just helping a friend who has a Dell Inspiron 3670 desktop he bought about 2 years ago.
The desktop came with a 128Gb SSD and a 1Tb HDD and 12GB RAM.
He wanted to swap the 128Gb SSD for a 256Gb SSD. When he took it a store they said no can do, it's running RAID. He took it back home and asked me what was up.
Since I don't have a Dell, I checked into the Inspiron 6370 and the settings related to RAID. I asked him to check all the related settings and hardware installed. Here is what he has.
- BIOS Sata Operation is set to RAID ON.
- Disk Drives installed:
- PC SN520 NVMe WDC 128GB (from device manager)
- ST1000M010-2EP102 (from device manager)
- Disk Manager shows both drives are BASIC
- NO Intel Optane memory installed (from Intel app)
So this brought up a couple questions.
First, why would Dell configure the BIOS with RAID ON when it's never being used for managing drives or Intel Optane memory?
Second, can he simply change the BIOS setting to RAID OFF WITHOUT causing any issues with the current Windows 10 install since it appears to have NO function for the current hardware?
If he can change the BIOS setting and all boots normally, then he should be able to clone the SSD over to a larger drive and swap it from the current SSD - correct?
I've done this many time over the years, literally hundreds of times, without issues. This is the first time though where the BIOS settings implies one thing and the hardware shows something else.
Thanks for any help you can give me on this. I just want to make sure a simple answer doesn't cause a huge problem for him.
XPS_Man
5 Practitioner
5 Practitioner
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2.4K Posts
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September 1st, 2022 17:00
The store you took it to certainly doesn't know their stuff. They must have confused SATA operation settings showing as RAID to actual RAID 0.
RAID in Dell BIOS is the storage controller type that provides better performance with Dell's storage driver. Every manufacturer calls it different, in my Lenovo, instead of the RAID, it says NVME.
Yes, you can reboot to safe mode and uninstall SATA drivers from the device manager. Then you should be able to change the SATA operation from RAID to AHCI. There is still a little chance of boot failure. (not recommended)
If you are planning a simple clone, you don't need to change anything in BIOS. Simply clone and Swap the SSDs. I hope you already have an NVME SSD casing.
Alternately you can do a fresh install of OS on the new SSD, will require bootable Dell OS USB media
All in All that RAID in bios is not the RAID we all know. Inspiron 3670 doesn't support RAID.
Any
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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43.6K Posts
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September 5th, 2022 18:00
You should still change BIOS from RAID to AHCI first...
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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43.6K Posts
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September 1st, 2022 17:00
@RMarc1 Dell typically installs Windows with RAID ON in BIOS. So it is what it is.
Some SSDs (eg, Samsung, Crucial) don't work well when BIOS is set to RAID, so good idea to change that before going further:
With existing SSD installed, you can easily disable RAID, but you have to do it the right way or Windows will become unbootable:
Now you're ready to image the existing SSD. If you don't want to buy an external NVME drive enclosure to clone the new SSD, you can image the existing SSD and save that image either on the internal HDD or on an external USB drive. Macrium Reflect (free) is a good tool for this. Include all partitions Macrium sees on the existing NVME in the image, and select the option to validate the image immediately after it's created.
Also be sure to use Macrium to create a bootable USB stick that you'll need in the next step.
When that's all done, swap in the new NVME SSD in place of the old one. Plug that bootable Macrium USB into PC with power fully off. Power on and tap F12 at the Dell splash screen. Select the option to boot from USB.
Macrium will load and you can now transfer the saved image onto the new SSD. Since the new SSD is larger than the original, you need to re-size the C: partition as part of the imaging process. Macrium can do that for you so be sure you understand the process, which will require you to move one partition at at time onto the new SSD, saving the C: partition for last because you can only increase the size of the last partition. If you don't expand C: during the imaging, all the extra space on the new SSD will be wasted.
RMarc1
3 Posts
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September 5th, 2022 14:00
@RoHe& @XPS_Man Thanks for the responses.!
When time allows I'll see how things go, maybe try a simple clone first.
RMarc1
3 Posts
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September 12th, 2022 14:00
Thanks for all the information.