Solved Replace (disable) BIOS HDA to use PCIe HBA w/out reinstall?

[BostonDriver]

Hi,

I'm using a Dell Precision 690 (Intel 5000X chipset) which does not support SATA 3 or greater than 2TB drives.

I plan on buying a PCIe HBA to solve this problem, either the High Point RocketRaid 640, 640L or 620 (but will take suggestions.)

If I go with the 640, I'd prefer to disable the on board SAS/SATA BIOS and put all 4 internal disks on the new PCIe HBA. If I do this, will it cause Win7 Pro 64bit to need to be re-activated (i.e. reinstalled) due to HW change? This has happened when I change the motherboard, but what about just the HBA?

Thanks

 

[BostonDriver]

So far, changing the SATA controller has not resulted in any problem. The product key is still valid. Windows Update doesn't turn up any new updates since this HW was installed. I typically have "something" at least once a week.

 

[essenbe]

Installing a hard disk should cause no problems at all, unless you reinstall.

 

[BostonDriver]

Installing a hard disk should cause no problems at all, unless you reinstall.

I didn't install a hard disk. I replaced the HBA.

I was able to get Win 7 updates this weekend. My product seems activated. In my case, the driver was the same as that used by the prior HBA. I don't know if that matters or not.

 

[essenbe]

Normally, the only time you have trouble is when changing motherboards. A lot of us here change hard drives, ram or graphics cards quite often and never have problems.

 

[BostonDriver]

Normally, the only time you have trouble is when changing motherboards. A lot of us here change hard drives, ram or graphics cards quite often and never have problems.

Same here... I've done all 3 of the above w/out issue. The HBA was built into the MB, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I disabled it and used a PCIe card. The HD was also > 2TB, and uses GPT, so it's different enough to be worried.

Thanks