Hi all,
May I please check a few things with you guys.
I have just setup a 128GB Crucial M4 in my Q6600 PC, so this will of course be running at SATA 3gb/sec speeds. I plan to move this drive to my new IB build this summer.
I initially had 2 750GB HDDs in a RAID 0, with Win 7 installed on this. However, when I rcvd the SSD I did the following;
1. Connected the SSD to SATA port 0, the HDDs to ports 1 and 2 and the CD/DVD drive to Port 3.
2. Entered the ICH9R (Intel Matrix Storage Manager ver 8.7) ROM (CTRL+I) and deleted the RAID 0 ARRAY, this left 3 'non-RAID' disks.
3. Entered the BIOS and made sure it was still set to RAID as I do not have AHCI, just RAID and ATA auto detect.
4. Booted with Win 7 DVD. Win Setup saw all three drives and listed them as 'unallocated space'. I proceeded to install Win 7 on the SSD (correctly listed as the first drive in the drive list)
5. Once in Windows, I Installed the latest version of Intel RST. This correctly listed the M4 as an SSD and reports that NCQ is enabled. My 2x HDDs are also correctly listed here.
6. I finally went to System Management and Initialised the other two drives as MBR, formatted them to NTFS and assigned drive letters, they now correctly show in explorer.
NB: I did update the M4 to the latest firmware using the boot CD before installing Windows.
I have just been reading a couple of SSD setup guides online and the general advice is to disconnect the HDDs before you install Windows and then re-connect them afterwards. I did not do this, however, none of my drives were formatted at the time of windows install. Why is this suggested and would this have caused a problem with my install?
As I did not have AHCI in my BIOS, I used RAID, however, I understand that the RAID mode may include AHCI with the ICH9R. The Intel RST software seems to report the SSD correctly. I have checked that TRIM is enabled via the command prompt and it is. Will the Intel driver be using TRIM?
Have I set things up correctly?
Thanks for reading guys, really appreciate your help
May I please check a few things with you guys.
I have just setup a 128GB Crucial M4 in my Q6600 PC, so this will of course be running at SATA 3gb/sec speeds. I plan to move this drive to my new IB build this summer.
I initially had 2 750GB HDDs in a RAID 0, with Win 7 installed on this. However, when I rcvd the SSD I did the following;
1. Connected the SSD to SATA port 0, the HDDs to ports 1 and 2 and the CD/DVD drive to Port 3.
2. Entered the ICH9R (Intel Matrix Storage Manager ver 8.7) ROM (CTRL+I) and deleted the RAID 0 ARRAY, this left 3 'non-RAID' disks.
3. Entered the BIOS and made sure it was still set to RAID as I do not have AHCI, just RAID and ATA auto detect.
4. Booted with Win 7 DVD. Win Setup saw all three drives and listed them as 'unallocated space'. I proceeded to install Win 7 on the SSD (correctly listed as the first drive in the drive list)
5. Once in Windows, I Installed the latest version of Intel RST. This correctly listed the M4 as an SSD and reports that NCQ is enabled. My 2x HDDs are also correctly listed here.
6. I finally went to System Management and Initialised the other two drives as MBR, formatted them to NTFS and assigned drive letters, they now correctly show in explorer.
NB: I did update the M4 to the latest firmware using the boot CD before installing Windows.
I have just been reading a couple of SSD setup guides online and the general advice is to disconnect the HDDs before you install Windows and then re-connect them afterwards. I did not do this, however, none of my drives were formatted at the time of windows install. Why is this suggested and would this have caused a problem with my install?
As I did not have AHCI in my BIOS, I used RAID, however, I understand that the RAID mode may include AHCI with the ICH9R. The Intel RST software seems to report the SSD correctly. I have checked that TRIM is enabled via the command prompt and it is. Will the Intel driver be using TRIM?
Have I set things up correctly?
Thanks for reading guys, really appreciate your help
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