AHCI is a SATA controller setting you may have in BIOS setup. It is optimal for Win7.
A RAID card will normally popup something at boot. See if you can select it and disable. If not look for any RAID in BIOS. If in doubt ask back. Camera snaps will help. Attach with paper clip icon in reply box.
Hi Greg, I haven't done anything with my PC yet, but have found this in the manual on the Dell site if it helps at all? It might shed some light on the system.
System Setup Options
Boot List Option
Allows you to change the boot list option.
Legacy
UEFI
Integrated NIC
Allows you to configure the integrated network controller. The options are:
Enable UEFI Network Stack
Disabled
NOTE: You can use the Disabled option, only if Active Management Technology (AMT) option is disabled.
Enabled
Enabled w/PXE (Default)
Integrated NIC 2
Allows you to configure the integrated network controller. The options are:
Enabled (Default)
Enabled w/PXE
NOTE: This feature is supported only on Tower 7910.
SATA Operation
Allows you to configure the internal SATA hard-drive controller. The options are:
Disabled
ATA
AHCI (Default)
NOTE: SATA is configured to support RAID mode. No SATA operation support in Tower 7910.
Drives
SATA–0
SATA–1
Default Setting: All drives are enabled.
NOTE: If the hard drives are connected to a RAID controller card, the hard drives will display {none} in all the fields. The hard drives can be seen in the RAID controller card BIOS.
SAS RAID Controller (Tower 7910 only)
Allows you to control the operation of the integrated SAS RAID HDD controller.
Enabled (Default)
Disabled.
Hope this info helps
Cheers
I took the above from:
Dell Precision Tower 7910 Owner's Manual
So look where it says to disable any RAID card. As I said post back pics of choices if in doubt. Set all to AHCI. Unplug one HD to install
When you say 'unplug one HD to install' are you referring to the extra WD HDD that I bought? That has already been removed. These are options I see. If I am to do a clean install, disabling the raid controller won't mess up the PC will it?
The fact the Samsung SSD is set to ATA - this is bad right? Also, I don't recognize that model of Samsung even when I google it which is strange.
Screens:
I read back through the thread to find your Disk Mgmt screenshot. It doesn't look like your SSD is involved in the RAID but only the data drives.
Look inside the case and at the RAID controller to see if you have 2-3 hard drives in an array that show as one in Disk Mgmt. due to RAID
If in doubt talk with Dell to ask why they would RAID your data drives so that you'd lose all data if one drive dies. Then have them explain why you shouldn't unRaid them and how exactly to do so without data loss. So idiotic this is that you'd probably need a 3 gb external drive to move a full RAIDed drive's data off to get it out of a RAID. This is to me absurd malpractice.
If you need further help with that RAID mess ask Dell or one of our hardware Gurus as it irritates me to even have to deal with such utter junk nonsense this far. I can't even advise you to unplug the other drives to reinstall to SSD for fear the RAID would be broken. I'd like to hear Dell explain why they'd build such dated crap - for a video editor with TB files? Why else?
Removing the raided disks "shouldn't" lose the array, as the info is written in option ROM or whatever it might be called. In my system (2x Raid0) I didn't lose the arrays while installing the OS (had all 4 disks disconnected). However, it is best to backup data before trying anything.
It may also be possible that there is no raid setup, however the controller might be in raid mode. In that case you can simply change to AHCI mode in BIOS, just make sure you do the registry change to load the msahci drivers at least.
AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista
The above won't matter if you will be doing a new OS installation.
By the way from the screenshots, it looks like the only drives attached at the moment is the SSD and dvd-rom.
Oh one more thing :)
You do get a bit more sequential read/write speeds with a RAID0 even though Greg don't like it.
Here is a test I just made: a simple one that is
From my Samsung 850 Pro to other drives - 3.07 GB (3D Mark Folder)
- Single drive - 640GB WD Cavier Green - 1:05.19 s
- RAID 0 - 2x640GB WD Caviar Green - 24.76 s
- RAID 0 - 2x1TB WD Cavier Black - 18 s
Raids are setup in Windows Disk Management. Using FreeFileSync to backup to 3TB E-Sata disk.
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