XPS laptop with mSATA card

Can you turn off the Intel Acceleration and make the mSATA card "available"
as a normal drive so its partition shows in Disk Management? We'd prefer to
not use it as a cache.

Thanks.

On Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:14:02 +1000, "Brian K"
wrote:

Can you turn off the Intel Acceleration and make the mSATA card "available"
as a normal drive so its partition shows in Disk Management? We'd prefer to
not use it as a cache.

Thanks.

Go Start, Intel, 'Intel rapid storage technology'. Select the
Accelerate button, then 'disable acceleration'. Next, under SSD
Configuration, click 'Reset to Available'.

I have a new Dell Vostro 3560 laptop with the same setup. I found that
disabling RST really slowed it down. Booting time more than doubled.

You may also have 'Rapid Start' enabled, with a hibernation partition
on the SSD of size = your RAM. You can disable this in Windows or in
the BIOS and reclaim this space as well.

There is a PDF on the Dell web site which explains all this.
Unfortunately, I don't have the URL (and it was difficult to find -
linked from a forum reply) but I have the PDF if you want it.

Cheers

Tom,

Many thanks for that. A mate plans to buy a Dell laptop in the next few
weeks and wants me to help him install WinXP as a multi-boot. It took me
years to get him off Win98 so I haven't even tried to start him on Win7.
I've read several disastrous threads about Intel Rapid Start and imaging so
I'd prefer to avoid the Intel software. I'm hoping to have WinXP and a
minimal Win7 install on the mSATA card, using BIBM as the boot manager. 32
GB is quite large enough for what I'm planning. Can this be done when the
card is "available"?

Is this the pdf you have seen?

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-bl...tup-guide.aspx

It doesn't really help my plans.

Brian

On Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:36:00 +1000, "Brian K"
wrote:

Tom,

Many thanks for that. A mate plans to buy a Dell laptop in the next few
weeks and wants me to help him install WinXP as a multi-boot. It took me
years to get him off Win98 so I haven't even tried to start him on Win7.
I've read several disastrous threads about Intel Rapid Start and imaging so
I'd prefer to avoid the Intel software. I'm hoping to have WinXP and a
minimal Win7 install on the mSATA card, using BIBM as the boot manager. 32
GB is quite large enough for what I'm planning. Can this be done when the
card is "available"?

Is this the pdf you have seen?

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-bl...tup-guide.aspx

It doesn't really help my plans.

Brian



Yes, it is the PDF referenced about 2/3 down (Intel Responsiveness
technologies 0.91.pdf).

Note that Rapid Start is quite different from Smart Response.

He must be a very good mate!

Do you have a reference to these 'disastrous threads' you found?

Cheers

Tom,

Here's one...

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=331212

Post #19 onwards. Cruise lost 4 data partitions completely, his OS wouldn't
load, his backup images wouldn't restore and he had to do a factory restore.
MudCrab developed OS corruption during his testing.

There is another thread where the poster couldn't image or restore with
ghost32.exe unless Accelerate was turned off.

Tom,

Page 4 in this pdf confirms your advice and indicates that I should be able
to install an OS on the mSATA card.

ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/raid/...se/English.pdf

On Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:08:32 +1000, "Brian K"
wrote:


Tom,

Here's one...

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=331212

Post #19 onwards. Cruise lost 4 data partitions completely, his OS wouldn't
load, his backup images wouldn't restore and he had to do a factory restore.
MudCrab developed OS corruption during his testing.

There is another thread where the poster couldn't image or restore with
ghost32.exe unless Accelerate was turned off.

I see on post #116 Cruise was using Smart Response in MAXIMISED mode.
This buffers the HD write-backs through the SSD and conflicts with
block mode imaging. It is safer to use the default (on my system)
Enhanced mode, which does immediate write-through the SSD back to the
HD.

If you look at
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fea..._z68_chip set
and search for 'imaging' on that page, you will see:-

|Here is the official response to your concern over file backups. It is as we thought, you are fine with any file-based backup tools that most of us run. If you run imaging-type backups, you'll need to run in Enhanced Mode, not Maximized Mode.

|"Intel Smart Response Technology in either Enhanced or Maximized mode is fully compatible with backup tools that operate at the file system or volume level in Windows, or DOS. An example of this would be the Windows built-in backup tools. Standalone backup and disk imaging tools that boot versions of Linux and other operating systems that are not cache aware and therefore not compatible and should only be used with Intel Smart Response Technology configured in Enhanced Mode."

These new technologies from Intel are very poorly documented. Intel
has created marketing blurb, and has left it up to the computer
manufacturers to actually document the features. Unfortunately the
manufacturers don't fully understand all the ramifications.
Consequently, things like this slip through the cracks.

Thanks Tom, really great information.