w700 with raid, turned it off and ?'s

[johnp126]

came with 2 320gb drives in raid 0. i used acronis to "clone" to a single drive. that only runs with bios sata in compatibility mode. if i put it into AHCI mode it blue screens. I read another thread that you can switch it back and forth but does not seem to work. another suggested running the intel software but when not in raid it shows no drives nothing. is there a way to install drivers or something so the system can use AHCI which according to posts is better for disk access.. any info would be helpful.

Note: i also tried putting in a drive, changing to ACHI in bios under sata and using the rescue and recovery but it worked but at end could not boot and kept asking to repair, but i have no windows DVD just the recovery set i made. very odd i must admit i don't know much about the RAID, ACHI, compatibility mode issues

[deforest]

Boot the system in compatibility mode.

Run Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver. To do this, go to C:\DRIVERS\WIN\IMSM\PREPARE, and double-click install.cmd.

That installs the achi driver.

Shutdown, change bios for disk to achi and reboot.

This taken from
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-70477

[johnp126]

When I connect to the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller i see
ATA Channel 0 3x and ch 1 3x
Richo 3 different controllers and Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller 3x

Also the software isn't in the location on the drive and when i download a new version it says to install you have to go to the (see)

DETERMINING WHICH VERSION IS INSTALLED

[Windows Vista 64-bit]
1. Right-click the My Computer and click Properties.
2. Click Device Manager.
3. Click the + sign in front of the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
or Storage controllers category.
4. Double-click Intel(R) 82801HEM/HBM SATA AHCI Controller or
Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller or
Intel(R) ICH9M-E/M SATA AHCI Controller or
Intel(R) ICH8M-E/ICH9M-E/M SATA RAID Controller.
5. Click Driver tab and the driver version is displayed.
However I don't have the Intel anything showing.

Also my system is vista 64 and since the download has no .exe files you can't just install.. i tried to update driver on each the ATA and std dual but neither works. ideas anyone?

[deforest]

Download the intel matrix drivers for vista direct.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product ... uctID=2101

Note you may need to select the ide device and select update driver on it.

Currently you must be using the default windows driver, thus the ahci driver isn't being shown.

[barrywohl]

You might try this work around:

Put the BIOS in ACHI mode.

Put a blank hard drive in the Port 0 bay on the laptop.

Use the rescue and recovery disks to reinstall the original disk image to the new hard drive.

I did exactly that while troubleshooting the RAID 1 on my W700. I had an extra black drive and I restored from disks, except I used recovery disks that IBM EasyServ sent me instead of the rescue and recovery disks, but the EasyServ disks and the rescue and recovery disks should be identical.

Here is another suggestion. Print out the Help section from the Intel Matrix Storage Console and go over it step by step.

Good luck.

My W700 came with RAID 1, dual 320 GB 5400 rpm hard drives and Vistal Ultimate x64, so I've had some experience messing around with a similar setup to yours. Let me know if I can help in any other way.

Barry

[johnp126]

i checked the intel site, but it appears that when u are in compatibility mode, the intel card doesn't show up in the ide/ata / atapi controllers just ata ch 0 ata ch 1, the ricoh controllers and std dual channel pci ide controller (3x). I created my system easily by just using acronis true image to "clone" the raid to 1 single drive. it works fine in compatibility mode, maybe i am being too picky but i read its better in sata mode but can't figure how to get the drivers installed in windows so when i change in bios it won't blue screen without rebuilding the whole system. if i can't i'll just leave it in compatibility mode. odd thing is if it is just a driver set you would figure it possible to find. i tried the downloads from intel they do not install. i tried the one from lenovo but it is not an setup.exe installer, you need to right click and install from device mgr but since the intel card doesn't show there in compatibility mode i can't figure out how to install the driver set..

[johnp126]

ok so i changed bios to SATA which allowed the Intel software to run properly again. Then I went in the software and checked the disks looked good. Then went into Manage, Disk Mgt and saw that there was a virtual for lack of a better word, RAID set setup. I deleted that and my 2nd drive came back, checked in the Intel software and it saw 2 non raid disks and its working fine so far.
Appears that since the system was setup with RAID manager, as long as u leave bios in RAID and just delete any raid sets in disk mgt you are fine. I backed up my system first just in case (acronis clone drive). thanks for everyones help.