XPS 435MT SSD

That's right - my cd/dvd would not work after I enabled RAID.  The cd/dvd is an ide device and enabling RAID moves you to ahci that's required for the SSD (so TRIM works).

An external cd/dvd will work just fine as it will be on usb.

Maybe I used the cables from the cd/dvd, but I don't think so.  I think there were enough connections.  (It's been a while :) )

In any event, you can disconnect the cd/dvd as you won't be able to use it when you switch to ahci.  I did disconnect the cd/dvd.

A photo will be great, to have the security that i connect the cables from the right places :-)

OK - I'll try to get to that this afternoon.

Looks like I can add an attachment in this forum - so that should work.

Here is the first photo of the SDD and HD - note that the SATA connection is the smaller - also called serial ata

close up of sdd

sdd and Hd connections

sata connections on main board

Note that one cable has multiple power connections that you can use.

You need two separate sata connection cables

Thank hou very much, maybe you have uploaded the same photo, but i understood the same, it was how i imagined.

If i want to buy another sata connection cable, i must search a particular model (ide/sata sata/sata boh..)?

Here is a better photo of the SSD connections.

Here is the second photo of the SDD and HD - note that the SATA connection is the smaller - also called serial ata

sdd and Hd connections

Note that one cable has multiple power connections that you can use.

You need two separate sata connection cables

Here is the third photo of the  sata connections on the mother board - 

problem booting maybe is: from wikipedia 

Boot issues[edit]

Some operating systems, notably Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, do not configure themselves to load the AHCI driver upon boot if the SATA-drive controller was not in AHCI mode at the time of installation. This can cause failure to boot, with an error message, if the SATA controller is later switched to AHCI mode. For this reason, Intel recommends changing the drive controller to AHCI or RAID before installing an operating system

I did a clean install, perhaps the reason no issues with boot.  Wonder what/if the repercussions will be. Make sure TRIM is enabled.

From CMD prompt:

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

That Microsoft fix allowed me to boot into Windows even with RAID set in the BIOS.

However, Samsung Magician software is still telling me that AHCI is not enabled. There is no difference in performance between RAID and ATA that I can notice.

Edit: After this I was able to install Intel RST. Without this fix, it would not install (not supported platform).

So, my SSD and HDD are both plugged in and BIOS set to RAID.

Microsoft fix was needed.

Intel RST is installed.

Samsung Magician still says that AHCI is disabled.

I don't see any performance difference between RAID and ATA modes.

Nevertheless there is huge performance improvement in the instance of Windows running on the SSD compared to the one on HDD. I just booted into the other by mistake and noticed this immediately.

DisableDeleteNotify = 0

I checked now.

It sounds like you did the command to test for trim and it returned a 0 - so you should be OK.

You might want to contact Samsung and ask them about the Samsung Magician software.  Explain that you did the DisableDeleteNotify and got 0, and ask why Magician is giving your conflicting info.

Again - if you got 0, you should be OK - at least that's my understanding.

Just curious, what does your device manager say?  After my install, with RAID (or AHCI) the device manager no longer shows IDE ATA/ATAPI controller but does now show instead Storage Controllers | Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R/ICH10R/DO SATA RAID Controller.