Intel Rapid Start Technology

Paladin

Rapid start does eliminate the hibernate options in windows.

What it does do  is enable a full power off state from which the 15z can fully recover in 6-9 seconds vs the time required for a full reboot.

My system is set to sleep when the lid is closed (default setting in windows). So a way to check, is close the lid and after the delay time you set in bios, the 15z should enter rapidstart.

When the 15z goes in to rapidstart power off mode, I hear a brief cycling of the dvd player. If you are on battery only, there are no lights,etc afterward - it is a full power off state.

When I press the power button to come out of the rapidstart mode, the fan comes on full for about 2 -3 seconds, and the PC screen comes back just like it was when it entered rapidstart. (ie open programs are still open, word documents that are being edited are still as you left them, etc). For me the recover time from the power button press to full functional OS is about 7 to 9 seconds.

You do need rapidstart enabled in bios, the properly set up 8gb partition, and the rapidstart drivers - and it sounds like you have that trio installed.

I have expienced the rapidstart system go in to an 'endless power cycle loop', where upon entering rapidstart, the computer is actually not off at all. This can be checked by doing a normal windows orb/shutdown procedure. If the computer auto restarts and does not turn off, you are in that mode. This can happen when changes to the partitions or other changes 'confuse' the rapidstart system.

You get out of that mode by reflashiing the bios, even if you are flashing the same bios version back on to itself. Bios A08 and A09 will reset the system to get out that mode. (I have had to do so as I was initially setting up an SSD.) With Bios A06, a reflash did not repair rapidstart operation.

Paladin,

Flashing the SSD bios is one of those events that can confuse the rapidstart system.

Hopefully the Dell download site will soon allow you to download the new bios and do a 15z bios reflash. Note that the reflash will reset all options to default in bios. For what it is worth, I keep it that way except for the one change of the timing for the rapidstart entry.

Thanks for the quick reply Ken!  Perhaps I'm stuck in that power cycle loop then.  After Standby, and the time elapses, the keyboard lights up, I hear the fan make some noise... and then after 15-20 seconds, the keyboard lights go out again, but the power switch LED is still solid lit.  If I press the power button at that point, the screen turns on immediately to the lock screen.

I even tried flashing my OCZ Vertex2 240GB to the latest BIOS and it hasn't seemed to help.  I attempted to download the A09 BIOS for the 15z, but the download link on Dell's driver page is just going to a Not Found page.  Does anybody have the L511ZA09.exe file I could get?

My boot time to the desktop is 9 seconds, cold start, with Windows 7 Home Premium, XPS15z, Intel SSD.

I have used Rapid Start and found recovery to the desktop takes 6 seconds,

Hmmmm, job security at the programming level.

Please explain the benifit using this feature.

Ken, just to be clear, I was having this issue BEFORE I flashed the SSD BIOS.  I thought I would try that to see if it helped.  My SSD is also not writing as fast as it should be (or as fast as it did in my older Dell XPS m1530.  According to CrystalDiskMark, I'm reading around 210MB/s and writing at only 90MB/s.  On my old laptop, the same SSD was 220/180.

Sonic10M, I have to agree, it doesn't SEEM like the Rapid Start really makes much difference.  That's why I asked earlier if anybody knows what technical differences there are between Rapid Start and Hibernate.  As far as I can tell, they both store to the SSD and both have about the same resume time.  The only advantage over cold booting is that you can leaves apps open and they will resume where they left off.

If anybody has the BIOS file for A09, L511ZA09.exe, I could sure use it!  The download link on Dell.com is broken.  You can email it to me at "paladin27" at that google mail address. ;-)

I haven't posted on this thread for a while.  We have a new blog post with a Dell Setup guide to Intel Responsiveness Technologies.

The blog may be found from the following link

en.community.dell.com/.../dell-whitepaper-intel-responsiveness-technologies-setup-guide.aspx

Hopefully this will help some of you that are still having problems.

TB

The guide mentions a Rapid start manager GUI - Will Dell make this available?

Hi Terry - I did all the steps you mentioned - but now the machine dies in sleep. If I resume within a few minutes of sleep - it works ok but if its in sleep for an hour or more - it refuses to wake up - the keyboard lights up but the screen remains blank. Finally i have to reboot it to make it work. Any idea what may be going wrong?

You need to create a "hibernation" partition using diskpart first.

After that you can go into the bios and see that the iRST option is enabled.

diskpart

select disk 0

list disk

create partition primary

list partition

set id=84 override

Once that is set the iRST driver will install

Just a pointer for anyone else trying to to get IRST functioning for GPT disks.

 'SET ID=84 OVERRIDE' returns

The specified type is not in the correct format.
For more information on the command type: HELP SET

For GPT you need a different SET ID:

~~~~~~~~~

1. If you are using UEFI boot with a GPT disk then you need a different 'SET' ID:

LIST DISK

SELECT DISK x

CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY SIZE=8192               (if 8GB RAM, 4096 if 4GB etc)

DETAIL DISK

SELECT VOLUME y

SET ID=D3BFE2DE-3DAF-11DF-BA40-E3A556D89593

2. Then reboot. BIOS will identify the partition and Rapid Start will be present in the BIOS.

3. Run Rapid Start setup

4. Open Rapid Start systray utility, set timer to 0 minutes.

5. Sleep your computer.

System should now go into regular sleep (S3), then RAM is written to the SSD, and ALL power lights go out, system is now in S4 - off but with session written to your SSD.

On power on, session is read from SSD back in to RAM, giving nearly instant resume.

~~~~~~~~~

Rapid Start is still not functioning on my Dell Vostro 3360.

Motherboard being replaced tomorrow under warranty.  

Please disable TPM from BIOS and try again.

It was already disabled so that doesn't help unfortunately.

Hey guys,

One question, so when the computer is on sleep you can't take out the battery, because will not save your session, just like the normal systems do, right ?

When I put the laptop on sleep I am at office, plugged-in and without battery. When I need to have the things saved and opened and leave from home I use hibernate (because I don't want to use the battery.

So, in my case If I activate Rapid Start, the hibernate will be deactivated and there is no way to use Sleep instead of Hibernate, saving the session while laptop have no power (neither cable or battery), right ? This it's kinda useless for me, I prefer to leave the whole SSD for Smart Response.

This (grahamlaws post from 1-22-13) worked for me (Dell XPS 15z L521 with 1TB HDD, 128GB SSD, WIndows 7 on HDD, using SSD for Intel Rapid Storage, Intel Rapid Start, and free disk space for my own use).  The key is if you are using UEFI, there is a DIFFERENT Intel Rapid Start Technology User Guide from Intel. The original instructions were for traditional boot and will not work.

download.intel.com/.../rapid_start_technology_user_guide_for_uefi1.pdf