Computer management allows the administrator to control the services and attached devices. Also, it enables admin to keep track of the performance of hardware and software. By using Disk Management snap-in in Computer Management, you can initialize and format the disks. To format unallocated SSD in Windows 10, 8, 7, etc., follow the given below steps:
First, click on the Start button and right-click on the Computer option. Choose Manage option from the context menu to open Computer Management.
After that, go to the left pane and select Disk Management. Right-click on the area of unallocated space on the solid state drive.
Now, choose the “New Simple Volume” from the context menu to run the New Simple Volume Wizard. Then, click on the Next button.
Enter the size of a new volume or chose the default value. Hit on the Next button.
Now, select a letter to drive or use the default character and hit on the Next button.
In this step, select a letter to assign the drive or use the by default character and click on the Next button.
Further, click on the Format the Volume with the Following Settings option.
After clicking on the correct parameters then click on the “Next” button.
Finally, click on the “Finish” button to format the unallocated space on the drive.
Looks like that system supports 2.5" SATA and mSATA, but not anything newer. In that case the Samsung 860 Evo should be at the top of your list for SSD options.
RAID 1 wouldn't give you any performance benefit since it uses mirroring to allow one disk to fail without causing a problem -- so if you want that extra reliability, then go for it. If you meant to ask about RAID 0, which does increase performance, I personally wouldn't do it because in that setup, if either of your disks fails, you lose all of your data, so you've essentially doubled the chances of a failure. I routinely capture backups, so that wouldn't be a huge inconvenience for me, but I personally find that a single SSD is enough for my needs, so the extra performance benefit of RAID 0 simply isn't worth the extra cost and risk for me.
I was suggesting that it looks like i can get upgraded performance with the SSD (probably Samsung 860), set up in mirrored RAID 1.
With thanks for your reply.
RAID 1 is meant for providing redundancy, not performance. It's just a mirror. I've read that some RAID controllers can get extra read performance out of a RAID 1 by reading different sectors from each member drive, but I don't know if laptop semi-RAID controllers will do that; that might be meant for enterprise equipment. And it wouldn't improve write speed at all.
@Popplestone When you say only one drive is recognized when you boot, what does that mean exactly? Where are you looking for that second drive when it boots and not finding it? Internal drives ship uninitialized, so if you’re just expecting it to appear with a drive letter under This PC in Windows Explorer, that’s not how it works. External drives are often pre-formatted from the factory so they do that, but not internal drives. Do you see the disk in Disk Management if you check the lower half of the center area?
Initially I tried to set up as Raid 1, but it didn't work (or I didn't do it right). I am fairly certain that I formatted both hard-drives. When I boot up, or run diagnostics, it recognises that there are two Samsung evo 360 drives, and says that they are non-raid. It must be booting from one, and not recognising the other. I imagine that I did not initialise the drive correctly. At the moment, I am backing up the entire drive (only 25gb left), and considering starting from scratch, reinstalling operating system, trying to initialise both drives, - unless I can figure out how to initialise the second one?
In "disk management," it says that disk one has 100mb EFI healthy partition, and 1862.03 GB Healthy (boot, page, file, crash, dump, primary partition), and 896mb Healthy (recovery partition)
@Popplestone If your attempt at a RAID 1 setup included formatting both hard drives, you were already going down the wrong path. If you want to use a RAID 1 for an OS disk, you need to set up the RAID 1 before you put anything at all on the disks, including the OS. If your system is actually in RAID mode rather than AHCI (did you check this in the BIOS?), then if the system detects multiple internal disks, at startup you should see a boot message saying something like “Press this key combination to enter Intel Rapid Storage configuration”. That is where you would create a RAID 1 virtual disk out of your two physical disks. This will wipe the existing contents of both disks, NOT allow you to specify one as the “source” that will initially be cloned to the “destination”. Once you’ve got your system firmware treating those disks as a RAID 1 virtual disk, you’d boot your system into Windows Setup and tell it to install to what Windows will see as a single disk. You might need to provide Windows Setup with the Intel RST driver if it doesn’t see the disk.
All that said, I’m not sure why the secondary disk isn’t being detected in Windows even inside Disk Management right now if the system firmware is detecting it just fine. But Windows numbers disks staring at 0, so you should have Disk 0 and Disk 1. You wouldn’t see a Disk 2 unless you had some other disk connected.
Popplestone
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October 17th, 2020 15:00
@jphughan
Finally! Got it.
I removed it from Storage Spaces, and is showed up in Disk Management, where I was finally able to set it up.
Thank you again for all of your support, your prompt replies, and your persistence.
Kind regards,
-
Method 1: Format an Unallocated SSD Using Disk Management
Ashwani Tiwari | Modified: April 8th, 2020 | Technology
Computer management allows the administrator to control the services and attached devices. Also, it enables admin to keep track of the performance of hardware and software. By using Disk Management snap-in in Computer Management, you can initialize and format the disks. To format unallocated SSD in Windows 10, 8, 7, etc., follow the given below steps:
jphughan
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December 7th, 2018 14:00
Looks like that system supports 2.5" SATA and mSATA, but not anything newer. In that case the Samsung 860 Evo should be at the top of your list for SSD options.
Popplestone
17 Posts
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December 7th, 2018 18:00
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Would you upgrade with 2 raid 1?
All best,
P
jphughan
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December 7th, 2018 23:00
RAID 1 wouldn't give you any performance benefit since it uses mirroring to allow one disk to fail without causing a problem -- so if you want that extra reliability, then go for it. If you meant to ask about RAID 0, which does increase performance, I personally wouldn't do it because in that setup, if either of your disks fails, you lose all of your data, so you've essentially doubled the chances of a failure. I routinely capture backups, so that wouldn't be a huge inconvenience for me, but I personally find that a single SSD is enough for my needs, so the extra performance benefit of RAID 0 simply isn't worth the extra cost and risk for me.
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
December 8th, 2018 14:00
Hi,
I was suggesting that it looks like i can get upgraded performance with the SSD (probably Samsung 860), set up in mirrored RAID 1.
With thanks for your reply.
Techgee
590 Posts
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December 9th, 2018 08:00
Note your only options for high performance are 2.5" SSDs, not the mSATA slot. I'd consider the mSATA slot for "archive" or data use only.
From the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M6700 manual (pg. 75):
M6700 two internal 2.5 inch SATA HDD/SSD (SATA3) + one mSATA SSD (SATA2)
jphughan
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December 9th, 2018 09:00
RAID 1 is meant for providing redundancy, not performance. It's just a mirror. I've read that some RAID controllers can get extra read performance out of a RAID 1 by reading different sectors from each member drive, but I don't know if laptop semi-RAID controllers will do that; that might be meant for enterprise equipment. And it wouldn't improve write speed at all.
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 02:00
@jphughan
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 02:00
Hello,
I have purchased 2 X 2tb SSD drives.
I would like to set up both drives in order to have 4tb of storage.
When i run diagnostic, it recognises both drives as non-raid, but when it boots up only one is recognised.
Is it possible to set up the second drive?
with thanks in advance.
jphughan
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October 15th, 2020 04:00
@Popplestone When you say only one drive is recognized when you boot, what does that mean exactly? Where are you looking for that second drive when it boots and not finding it? Internal drives ship uninitialized, so if you’re just expecting it to appear with a drive letter under This PC in Windows Explorer, that’s not how it works. External drives are often pre-formatted from the factory so they do that, but not internal drives. Do you see the disk in Disk Management if you check the lower half of the center area?
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 05:00
@jphughan Thank you for the prompt reply.
Initially I tried to set up as Raid 1, but it didn't work (or I didn't do it right). I am fairly certain that I formatted both hard-drives. When I boot up, or run diagnostics, it recognises that there are two Samsung evo 360 drives, and says that they are non-raid. It must be booting from one, and not recognising the other. I imagine that I did not initialise the drive correctly. At the moment, I am backing up the entire drive (only 25gb left), and considering starting from scratch, reinstalling operating system, trying to initialise both drives, - unless I can figure out how to initialise the second one?
In "disk management," it says that disk one has 100mb EFI healthy partition, and 1862.03 GB Healthy (boot, page, file, crash, dump, primary partition), and 896mb Healthy (recovery partition)
There is no disk 2
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 05:00
correction: Evo 860
jphughan
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October 15th, 2020 06:00
@Popplestone If your attempt at a RAID 1 setup included formatting both hard drives, you were already going down the wrong path. If you want to use a RAID 1 for an OS disk, you need to set up the RAID 1 before you put anything at all on the disks, including the OS. If your system is actually in RAID mode rather than AHCI (did you check this in the BIOS?), then if the system detects multiple internal disks, at startup you should see a boot message saying something like “Press this key combination to enter Intel Rapid Storage configuration”. That is where you would create a RAID 1 virtual disk out of your two physical disks. This will wipe the existing contents of both disks, NOT allow you to specify one as the “source” that will initially be cloned to the “destination”. Once you’ve got your system firmware treating those disks as a RAID 1 virtual disk, you’d boot your system into Windows Setup and tell it to install to what Windows will see as a single disk. You might need to provide Windows Setup with the Intel RST driver if it doesn’t see the disk.
All that said, I’m not sure why the secondary disk isn’t being detected in Windows even inside Disk Management right now if the system firmware is detecting it just fine. But Windows numbers disks staring at 0, so you should have Disk 0 and Disk 1. You wouldn’t see a Disk 2 unless you had some other disk connected.
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 07:00
Hello and thank you again.
Originally, I did want to set up RAID. Now, I want two separate disks.
In diagnostics, it sees disk 0 and disk 1, but only disk 1 in disk management.
Following backup, would you suggest starting from scratch in trying to set up the two disks?
I will do some reading on how to go about it, and would welcome any helpful links
With thanks again.
Popplestone
17 Posts
0
October 15th, 2020 09:00
both drives also show up in device manager (disk drives), but not in computer management (storage - Disk Management)