Intel Smart Response Technology Issue

[idata]

I recently had this working perfectly until I upgraded to new hard drives. So I understand the process of how to set everything up. Make sure you are in Raid in bios, install windows, tell the program you want to use your SSD to boost your HDD. (The process in a nutshell). So down to the problem.

I open up the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program.

I click the Accelerate tab.

I go down to the "Enable acceleration" link and click it.

It ask me for my settings, I select them. (Fairly simple with one SSD and one HDD.)

-I chose Full disk and Maximized mode in case anyone is curious. I also tried all the combinations to see if it would work any other way.

I then click the "OK" button.

This is where the issue is.

It brings me back to the Accelerate tab saying:

Accelerated device: None Select device

Acceleration mode: None

BUT, the SSD is cached.

The little bit of trouble shooting I attempted was:

-Restart the computer (obvi).

-Reinstall the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program.

System Specs:

Asus Maximus 4 Gene-Z (It's a Z68)

i7 2600k

Corsair memory: CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9R

Corsair SSD Sata 3: CSSD-F60GB3-BK

WD Black 2TB: WD2002FAEX

[RBusc]

I have the exact same issue as the OP after swapping hard drives.

I've recently built a new system with Intel DZ68DB mainboard, Core i52400, 8GB RAM, an Western Digital WD2002FAEX 2TB hard drive and an Intel 311 SSD (20GB) to use the SSD cache feature of the latest RST drivers. Both drives connected to the 6GB/s ports. A few weeks the system and the SSD acceleration worked just fine, but then I started getting SMART errors from the WD drive and reallocated sector count went through the roof (BTW avoid the 2TB Caviar Black series, this is the third WD drive from that series that died after only a few weeks here). So I went into RST, disabled acceleration and used Acronis to clone the WD to a new Hitachi drive (same size) which fortunately completed successfully.

However now I'm unable to enable the SSD acceleration again in RST. When I click on accelerate it brings up the dialog to choose drive to accelerate (there is only the 1.8TB system drive) and mode (I always use advanced). When I click OK there is no error message but in the main page it still says "Accelerated device: none" (I'm translating this from German BTW). I uninstalled the RST drivers, installed the most recent ones, upgraded BIOS, performed a secure erase on the SSD etc. pp., nothing helps.

BTW, I performed the exact same procedure on an Asus P8Z68-V board with the exact same pair of drives (failing WD cloned to Hitachi, Intel 311 SSD cache) and it workerd without a hitch, successfully re-enabled SSD cache for the new drive. So maybe a problem with the DZ68DB itself?

[idata]

Hi Twincharger,

I have the same issue that you describe after cloning my hard drive and using the new image as the boot drive. I've tried everything under the sun without success. My MB is an ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe/gen3 so I don't believe there is an issue with the MB. I'm sure there is something else regarding BIOS or maybe Windows 7 registry entries by ISRT that create the issue. I'm at a loss. I hope that somebody from Intel commiserates and gives us good technical info to resolve this issue. I'm sure many people will experience the problem when trying to migrate their OS installation to another drive.

Update:

Great news!. Problem solved. As I read in other postings of this discussion y shrunk drive's C volume by 20Mb and then extended it again and after that I went to accelerate and Voila! acceleration works. Who knows why!

Message was edited by: josperan

[AKell6]

I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to say thanks for this thread. :-)

I was having the same issue. My partition layout was unusual because I had migrated an MBR disk to GPT using gdisk and I put the EFI system partition at the end of the disk. I was not able to activate Intel SRT.

To fix it, I actually moved the EFI system partition to a different disk and expanded the Windows partition to cover the entire drive. After that, Intel SRT turned on with no problem.

[idata]

I have the same problem with Asus Boad, 2TB Samsung the problem is the EFI/GPT Partition.

The Workaround with:

Go into disk management and shrink the 2tb hdd. I just entered the shrink in MB amount to 10MB, and set that up.

After this SRT works with a EFI partition.

[idata]

The shrink/expand option fixed it for me too.

I suspect it's because it was cloned long ago. The shrink/grow probably rewrote the partition table properly.

[RBusc]

I finally solved this using the "resize" trick posted earlier in this thread. I went into disk management, shrinked c: drive by 20mb and then resized it back to full size, rebooted. Now accelleration worked instantly after enabling it for the hard drive. Obviously something in the MBR and/or partition table was messed up and the resizing caused Windows to fix/rewrite these disk structures. Others with this problem may also try booting from the Windows 7 CD (or launch repair console via F8) and use the fixmbr and fixboot commands at the command prompt.

[idata]

Well I'm glad I found this thread. I went crazy with this. Exact same problem. I have an EFI system and shrinking/expanding the partition and rebooting did the trick for me too. Thanks!

[idata]

Oh Hallelujah !! I'm also very late to this thread and I wish I had found it sooner.. I spent more than a week trying different things trying to fix this issue... Here is a link to a thread from the OCZ forum in case it of any use to anyone.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?104917-Agility-3-60Gb-with-WD2002FAEX Resolved Agility 3 60Gb with WD2002FAEX

My system is an ASUS P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3 BIOS 3402

RST drivers 10.8 (see pics on ocz forum for dowce screenshot of my exact settings)

Intel i7 2600k overclocked to ~4500Mhz.

OCZ Agility 3

Seagate barracuda 2TB disk - or 500GB WD blue. - also tried a 2TB WD caviar black but sent it back - (*performance was faulty anyway)

I spent days trying to find a solution - I finally fixed my system thanks to the suggestion by ferhanmm - shrinking and re-extending the volume.. Nothing else worked..

THANK YOU !

-Jason

[oorla2]

Hy there, I've got the same IRST issue, but the hard drive I'm trying to accelerate is a single 500gb hdd, not a 2.2tb, so, the "reduce the HD size solution" won't work for me. Do you guys know of something I could try?

thank you all