Problem getting Intel Rapid Storage to Accelerate

I've got a brand new Inspiron 14z (5423).  I'm installing a fresh copy of Windows 8 on the machine and here's where I'm at so far.

* Flashed the BIOS up to A08

* Run DISKPART and cleaned both my main SATA drive and the 32GB SSD

* Set the BIOS SATA to IRST and successfully installed Windows 8 onto it.

* Run DISKPART on my SSD to create a new 8GB hibernation partition and successfully got Intel Rapid Start up and running

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When I run the latest Intel Smart Response Technology management utility, I click "Enable Acceleration", choose an 18.6GB cache, and "Enhanced" mode.  It creates the cache volume in the Acceleration View and after a long pause I get the message "An error occurred and the selected disk or volume could not be accelerated.  Please restart your computer and then try the operation again."  

I'm assuming that it's referring to my SATA drive, not the SSD.  If I reboot, go back into the utility, go to the Acceleration tab and click "Select device" next to my SATA drive, I get a window with the selection of "Enhanced" or "Maximum" mode, I choose Enhanced, click OK, and then I get another long pause and the error message "An unknown error occurred while an operation was in progress.  The operation could not be completed."  

I've run this many times, before and after booting with the same result.  Booting into Safe Mode also gives same result.  I've re-installed Windows 8 using multiple Intel mSata RAID drivers including the latest from the Intel and Dell sites.  I've tried different cache sizes on the SSD.

The windows event logs for IRST say "Error: Action failure, Action request timed out DiskSetCacheMode"

Any ideas?