How to disable Raid in Dell Laptop or Optiplex with Win7?

Take a look at this link as for how to change the SATA controller mode after Windows installation:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227636/how-to-change-sata-modes-after-windows-7-installation

Yes, there's a companion post here ( https://community.mcafee.com/message/193283 ) and here ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976#method2 ) and here ( http://superuser.com/questions/471523/changing-from-raid-to-ahci-and-windows-7-will-not-boot ) and here ( http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61869-ahci-enable-windows-7-vista.html ).  The last one shows the registry edits also, as you navigate through it.

My point is that the issue has been known for some time, yet the machine ships with RAID default on.  Makes no sense, in a laptop.  RAID itself makes no sense either, and especially NOT in a laptop, as the moment you disconnect the drive, you lose the data on the remaining drive.

I can't fix this without invalidating the warranty on the machine, and frankly the very default creates a defect I don't want to put up with.  Had this been a new issue, fine.  But it's been a problem since 2007, and Win8 is well known for needing AHCI, so why are Win8-upgradable machines shipped with RAID ON default?  The Precision 6500 has the same problem, so presumably the 6600 will as well, I don't remember.  The Precision 6700 has the same RAID ON default.

Dell obviously picks it so that the user can as well, on the fly.  But there is no scenario when RAID will be needed on a laptop.  You'd have to put a second hard drive in the modular bay, and you'd have to be doing a lot of intensive work you can't lose at any second, to even be in jeopardy.  Your battery won't last very long, because you can't put the other one in the modular bay.  Or, you can claim to connect an eSata, but then when you disconnect.. poof.  That's RAID 0.  Raid 1 is constant duplication, which wears out battery faster.  Wouldn't it be easier to back up a changed file you're working on, to a flash drive ad hoc?  Or, work with it from the flash drive in the first place? Or just use constant-backup software like Acronis or Rebit.  No need to make a hardware default which makes trouble for millions of buyers.

For there's little risk of loss unless you drop the laptop -- in which case bye bye the modular RAID drive, too?  It just makes no sense to use RAID on a laptop.  Certainly, not as a default setup, especially since Win7 can't function with the change, and Win8 won't install without AHCI enabled instead.

The workaround registry edit doesn't really solve anything, as the problem goes beyond mere registry changes.  You cannot use your recovery or reinstallation disk after those changes.  The system will just revert to RAID ON again.  So the entire recovery partition, reinstallation disk, and thus the warranty provision about returning the equipment as originally sent, are all invalidated.  In short, this is a dumb default no one fixes.  I made a video about it today, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAXzSZR6WI

Makes you wonder what other things are overlooked.

The Latitude 6510 doesn't have this problem.  So I already wrote Dell to cancel the 6530 unless they change the default to AHCI without me having to reinstall Windows 7;  and I bought the 6510 at Dell Off-Lease.  If I don't hear back from Dell by the time the 6530 arrives, I'll just call in for a return and get my money back.

Took me three days to try and complete the purchase of the 6530, and ALL day yesterday just trying to wrestle with the Outlet website.  Won't be repeating that experience, anytime soon.  Off-Lease and Auction are much easier to navigate.  So will do any future purchases from there.

Punchline:  I had wanted to buy the 6530 since last April, but Dell.com wouldn't allow me to buy it new with 8 GB of RAM on 32-bit Windows.  So I had to wait until it went out of production.  After realizing the RAID-ON problem I dipped into Dell Direct Sales for the off-lease, being kinda depressed at having not bid and won the 6510 I was trying to buy at dellauction until choosing instead, the 6530 last night.  So today, depressed, in Dell Direct Sales what happened, but a few minutes after I learned of the RAID problem?  Another 6510 was suddenly for sale (newly, as I'd checked the site about every hour) -- with 8 GB of RAM and 32-bit Win7.  Aha.

I was and remain a big Dell fan.  Still, it's not good business practice to force RAID ON default in laptops.  Someone isn't thinking clearly.  For over five years.

If Dell would ship or make available for download, a RE-IMAGED Windows 7 Professional 32-bit (or 64-bit etc) so that the AHCI drivers would install, the customer could then just apply that upon receipt or at will; and the AHCI would end up being part of the initial shipment, so wouldn't invalidate whatever warranty.  Else I see no easy solution.  This is a problem for millions of customers, so something should have been done a long time ago.

Here's another suggested answer:  change the default to AHCI, then offer as an extra option for a price, the RAID ON configuration customization.  That way Dell makes money on a configuration which prior, caused most customers angst, but got only a few huzzahs.  So now the huzzahs can pay for it, knowing they got something special.

For it is special:  WHO WOULD WANT a RAID On configuration?  Can't think of anyone, except maybe some mission-critical DoD operative.

Hi Brainout,

I can't fix this without invalidating the warranty on the machine

Absolutely untrue.

I'm not sure about the configuration in the Latitude, but some systems have an SSD cache that requires the controller mode to be set to RAID.

Okay, thank you osprey.  I was on the phone with Dell and they didn't contradict the warranty statement problem, but they didn't confirm it either.  Just said they understood my concern.  They don't know enough about the issue.  I was on the phone with six different reps.  So when the machine arrives tomorrow it looks like I'll lose yet ANOTHER DAY on this problem, because I'll have to unbox and test.  Or, I'll just say to heck with it and send it back.  It shouldn't be this hard to get such a simple question, answered.

It's a question of the initial Dell image for the OS, whether the AHCI drivers are installed also, as they could have been slipstreamed into the factory installation of the OS.  Should be simple to find that out, but it wasn't.  No one even knew what I was talking about.

Really sad, that the issue isn't dealt with anywhere within Dell help, given all the complaints on the internet about the Raid On default, which is commonly on Dell notebooks -- since 2007!

I hear your concern. Let me check with the other Rockstars and see if anyone can suggest anything.

Several Iterations of windows Don't work Properly unless they start as RAID ATA OR RAID ON.

This can be fixed by Installing the os and running a Microsoft FIX without reinstalling.

Error message occurs after you change the SATA mode of the boot ...

support.microsoft.com/.../922976

STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

You Run this and Reboot then switch CMOS to AHCI.

You can then also install INTEL RST drivers if they aren't already installed.

After you use the BIOS setup of a Windows 7-based computer or a Windows Vista-based computer to change the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) mode of the boot drive to use either the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) specification or redundant array of independent disks (RAID) features, you receive the following error message when the computer is restarted: 

Thank you, osprey4.  The  machine is supposed to arrive today.  I will bite the bullet and open the package, and do what 'Anita' at Dell said would work (which I doubt will work) -- change the setting to AHCI in BIOS SATA configuration.  I searched the internet yesterday and didn't find this RAID ON problem with respect solely to the 6530, but find it on the Precision models, and some other Latitudes (like the 6400, which is kin).

Thank you, SpeedStep.  This same issue and the KB, etc. was reported in notebookreview forums, which I joined yesterday to troubleshoot this in advance.  At issue is whether the Latitude 6530 itself is subject to the problem.  So I'll have to open the box, and find out.  If the problem is there, as I suspect it will be, then I have to find out if the warranty will be invalidated by making the fix.

The bigger problem is that the reinstallation disk, the recovery partition, are all based on the same RAID ON default.  So to restore, etc. means going through the same mess again.  I don't want to do that.  There's no excuse for not slipstreaming the AHCI drivers into the installation of Windows 7 by Dell.  THEY install it the first time, so THEY could have made the image incorporate all the drivers instead of just RAID ON, so this 'fix' wouldn't be needed.  But apparently they didn't fix it.  So to me, that's a defect.

The Latitude 6510, though an older and slower machine, doesn't have the problem.  Its default is AHCI.  I bought it also, after having purchased the 6530 and learning from p.63 of the manual, the Raid On problem.  The 6510 was my alternate purchase.

Please don't get me wrong:  I'm a huge Dell fan, and remain one.  Yet that's precisely why Dell should fix this, since the fix is to merely slipstream all the drivers into the Windows installation at the factory.  WHY WAS THIS NOT DONE?

Dear speedstep - please again take a look at this problem.

I just received yesterday a new Win 7 Pro 64-bit computer, did a fresh install of the OS, loaded up all my favorite settings and programs and then saw that my BIOS is RAID ON.

I could change the BIOS setting to "RAID if signed drives, else AHCI", but this article and many others indicate that ---

a)  I'll get a BSOD;

b) The MS KB article    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976/en-us   doesn't work.  SO say a number of forum posters AND the great book "Windows 7 Annoyances" by David A. Karp (O'Reilly 2010), on page 659 under "SATA Configuration"; and

c)  Even if I succeed in switching and booting, I will be back to where I was if I ever restore from an image, etc.

So - what to do?

ALSO:  At the moment, I have only the new PC's one drive, and all is OK.  But at some point I'd like to install a second hard drive for extra space, as a backup target, and/or maybe dual boot from my old XP, and I ASSUME that the RAID ON setting will prevent me from using the second HD that way.  Am I right about that?  (I'm not very knowledgeable about anything.)

ALSO MORE:  I understand that AHCI is a good thing - it's better to have it than not.  Do you agree?

Anyway, speedstep, you're great, and I hope there's a real good chain of steps to fix this that's close to 99.9999% correct.

Thanks.

Osprey and speedstep - after doing more research, I followed the MANUAL regedit instructions in the MS article you cited above (NOT the "fix-it" download), and so far seems to work.  My home Opti 780 is now booting into "RAID autodetect / AHCI".

The article is   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

QUESTION - Now that I have marked the two extra services to start at boot-up with AHCI, what would happen if I now set the BIOS to boot in ATA?  Would those extra services interfere with an old-style bootup?

I ask because I have a different Win 7 machine at work with its BIOS currently set to boot in ATA.  I am tempted to make the same changes as the MS article and switch the BIOS to AHCI.  But if I then get a BSOD in AHCI, would I be OK returning the BIOS to ATA, or am I now stuck with no way to set anything back because ATA doesn't like the two new services starting?

Thanks.

> at some point I'd like to install a second hard drive for extra space, as a backup target,

> and/or maybe dual boot from my old XP, and I ASSUME that the RAID ON setting

> will prevent me from using the second HD that way.  Am I right about that? 

If you only have one disk, you cannot use RAID (0 == disk-striping; 1 == disk-mirroring).

If you add a second disk, and you do *NOT* define it to be a part of a RAID "array", it just is a second, independent, disk.  If you *DO* add it, then it can be added as 'RAID 1', and software (either in the BIOS, or the Intel Rapid Storage tool) must be used to create a "mirror" (by copying everything from the "old" disk to the "new" disk) and then to "synchronize" the two drives.

Use of 'RAID 1 (mirroring)' has "saved my bacon" more than once -- when one of the disks "died", I removed it, connected a new disk, and allowed the "mirroring" to be reinstated (took about 3 hours for a 500GB disk). I had *NO* loss of my data.  Sweet!

An alternative would be to "backup" all the files in the 'My Documents' folder, then delete everything.

Add a new hard-drive, that will *NOT* become a member in a RAID array.

Then, create a partition on that new drive, and "mount" that partition "into" the now-empty 'My Documents' folder.  Reload from the "backup".

The user sees his/her files, but they are physically stored on the new drive.

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OR, back to the original situation ...

It is *NOT* "automatic" that any newly-added disk-drive will "join" into a RAID-set.

The system-administrator must add the drive (either in the Dell's BIOS-setup, or via software while Windows is running) into the RAID-set.

It's possible that if you add a pair of disk-drives, and create a new RAID-set for these two disks, then your drive-cloning software will be able to copy from the 160GB disk to the new RAID-set.

I either purchase Western Digital or Seagate drives, because both of their web-sites have free software that will "clone" disk-drives.  This software can be written to a bootable CD-R, so that Windows is *NOT* running while the "cloning" is being done.

Actually, there is a "trick" with the above WD/Seagate software.  Either:

1. you are copying from a WD/Seagate drive, or,

2. you are copying to a WD/Seagate drive, or,

3. when there is a WD/Seagate drive accessible to the software (even though you choose to *NOT* elect this drive as either "source" or "target") you can copy from/to one "foreign" drive from another "foreign" drive.

Note that a RAID-1 set will still boot (if nominated in the BIOS-setup) even when one member of the set is "dead".

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Or, note that if you add a "new" disk-drive to a "broken" RAID-1 set, and the "old" drive is 160GB, then the "rebuild" software will only use the first 160GB on the new drive, no matter how large the new drive.

So, this is one way to create an "image" of the existing hard-drive.

Note that the '\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\diskpart.exe' command-line program can "expand" a partition (such as the image of the 160GB drive) to use all the available space on the drive.  Then, this "expanded" drive can be installed to replace the original 160GB drive.  Voila! New drive, with more space.

My original goal was to image the original (160gig) HD on my CFO's OptiPlex 780 to a new SSD drive; we ran out of space and unit is getting slow.  I have tried but because of this RAID issue, my imaging software will not work; I always get an unbootable drive.  Due to the specialized software on the original 780 we don't dare play around with it to much without first doing an image, but we cant  .

Can I add the Intel SSD to the RAID then pull the original disk or because of the miss-match will this not work?  I would even be willing to buy 2 x 480gigs and add the second one in to complete the RAID..

MKLASSEN, I added the second 360gig HD and it made it a RAID 1 as well errrr.