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

[idata]

 

• In the BIOS, turn hot swapping off for both ports containing the drive and the SSD. Maybe there is a problem with hot swapping and caching, which would make a lot of sense, since Maximum caching ties the SSD to the drive.

 

• Try and use the SATA II Ports instead of the SATA III ports. I am accelerating a SATA II hard disk with a SATA III SSD, but someone mentioned that worked for them earlier.

 

I have successfully accelerated a drive on a hot-swap port (made use of the hotswap as well in the process, but I know I explicitly enabled hotswap on that port).

I too use a SATA III SSD to accelerate a SATA II HDD.

I also would have thought that the efi/system partition issue would have solved Runic's issue. I wasn't aware of the system partition until I did it step-by-step during the win7 install (if you just click 'next' using an unallocated space, it does so silently).

EDIT:

Having compared my disk managment to the screenshot (lulz@partitionnames btw ) I'd agree that it sure doesn't look like you have the little 100mb system reserved one. I suppose it's maybe still possible that you're using efi, though... I didn't see anything that ruled that out?

Message was edited by: Tofof

[idata]

Okay I found a solution that worked for me. I have pretty much the same setup as you 2tb hdd and a 64gb ssd.

First when it said Accelerated device: none

I clicked reset to available, to restore it to the nonsetup state.

Then go into disk management and shrink the 2tb hdd to under 2tb. I just entered the shrink in MB amount to 800000, and set that up.Next once the hdd was done creating the new partition, i went back and clicked accelerate drive, and it worked!

Then I went back into disk management and extended the drive back to its normal size and it remained accelerated.

Hope this helps someone else also.

[eh3]

what the heck. I don't know why, but ferhanmm's solution totally worked for me. My setup is:

OS on 128gb SSD

Data on 2TB

intended cache drive on another 128gb SSD

It would always give an unknown error when I tried to select the 2TB to accelerate. So I shrunk the partition in windows disk manager, by 1gb. Accelerated it through the SRT console, and it totally worked! What the heck is going on intel!

[Silvia_L_Intel1]

Flashbacck, which motherboard are you using? And which is the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology version?

I would like to test this on our systems but I need that information first.

[rsanc11]

Same problem, same solution. Shrink the partition and "voila", the acceleration appears. It´s magic and crazy.

[idata]

I reformated this weekend. Solved my issue.

[KCowa]

I've having the same problem as the OP. My hard drive is 1TB though. Any new ideas other than reformating the drive...I sure don't want to do that, last time I have to call Microsoft go manually install the activiation numbers (must have been a hundred of them!).

[AvanT]

I am experiencing this issue as well. Trying to accelerate a 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (WD20EADS) with a 60GB OCZ Vertex 3 (firmware 2.15) on an Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen 3 (bios 1.10), and all I get is exactly what the OP describes. However this was on a clean install of Win 7 64-bit. I bought the SSD expressly for this purpose, so I'm very interested in getting this to work!

[idata]

Similar position I was in. Even though it supports up to 2TB for some reason it is incompatible. If you know how to resize the drive Intel SRT will pick it up instantly.

Click the start/windows button type "Disk Management" push enter

Once disk manage ment starts select your primary hard disk(not the ssd) right click it and click shrink volume. I shrunk it by about 80000mb.

Then once its shrunk, try the setup again and it should setup properly.

[KCowa]

Didn't work for me.

[AvanT]

Got it working!

Based on my own experiences and on what's happening to other people in this thread, it seems that Intel RST will silently fail if it encounters a "wonky" partition setup. It turns out my system was set up very oddly - I installed Windows 7 to a partially partitioned drive, simply installing it to the unpartitioned space. It appears that it installed the bootloader to a different partition than everything else! It was a bit tricky to move it back, but once I did then accelerating my drive worked on the first try.

[idata]

My system consists of DZ68DB board, i5-2500k, Intel 311 SSD (SATA II), Seagate Barracuda 500 GB (SATA III).

I decided for Intel 311 SSD as it was advised by Intel for the smart response technolgy of the Z68 chipset.

The first intallation I did with the SSD physically connected to the system, and I afterwards realized, that the Windows "system" partition (100MB) was created on the SSD during Windows installation.

Than I did install all Intel drivers I found on the Intel page for my mainboard (including chipset- and RST).During boot-up both drives report the same status: "non-raid drive" (in green, the 'ready to go' state). But when I tried to activate the acceleration with RST (version 10.6.0.1002) I got the following error message "An unknown error has occurred while an operation was in progress. The operation could not be completed." After that the status on boot-up is still "non-raid drive" (in green) for the HDD, but "unknown" (in red) for the SSD.

The hints behind this error messags were only to retry and to reinstall RST. Both hints did not help.

So I digged into the community and looked for other helpful hints.

First I did an update of my BIOS to be able to turn off hot swapping for both ports containing the HDD and the SSD, but wihtout any effect.

Therefore I did a reinstallation of Windows while the SSD was physically disconnected and I only did connect it once Win7 was fully installed (the HDD has still only a single partition but no system partition on SSD any more).

Nevertheless I still get the error message "An unknown error has occurred while an operation was in progress. The operation could not be completed." when I try to accelerate my magnetic HDD with RST (version 10.8.0.1003).After that the status on boot-up is still "non-raid drive" (in green) for the HDD, but "unknown" (in red) for the SSD.

With the Intel SSD Toolbox I checked the firmware version of my SSD, but is the newest.

I have no idea any more!

[idata]

I'm not really sure that the Windows "system" partition being created on your SSD when you installed the OS on the HDD. How do you know this happened?

The correct procedure is to have both SSD and HDD attached to the mainboard SATA ports before installing the OS. Then you enter the BIOS to set the chipset mode to RAID. Then you install the OS on the HDD. Once that is done, you install your Intel drivers, including RST.

See the second post in this thread for the Intel RST screenshots after a successful installation and configuration. I have the same motherboard as you, a 40GB Intel 311 SSD, and a 1TB Western Digital HDD. The only problem I originally had was that the drivers wouldn't install correctly from the Intel CD-ROM, so I had to download them all from the Intel website. Once I had the correct drivers, the installation worked.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032826.htm?wapkw=smart http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032826.htm?wapkw=smart response technology

[idata]

Thank you for your answer. I try to explain, why I am sure with my description:

Unfortunately at my first Windows installation the SSD was on port 0 and the HDD on port 1.

This caused Windows to install boot partition on the SSD. I found a hint in another thread in support community "chipsets" (/thread/22529?start=60&tstart=0 http://communities.intel.com/thread/22529?start=60&tstart=0) and there the recommandation was to install windows with SSD disconnected.

Nevertheless, in both cases (SSD connected during Windows installation and SSD disconnected during Windows installation) the end result was the same:

acceleration cannot be activated.

The error message itself is not really helpful: "An unknown error has occurred while an operation was in progress. The operation could not be completed."

Is there any chance ro get more information about the root cause of the problem, does RST store additional informaiton in a logfiel? If so, were?

Does anybody has an idea about possible root causes?

I am a bit surprised, that my HDD has SATA III (6GB) but the SSD has only SATA II (3GB). Could this be a root cause?

[idata]

I just tried to follow the hint from Bafico (answer 6.) and mounted a HDD with SATA II in my PC.

After creating a NTFS partition on it I tried to accelerate this disk, but it did not suceed but end up in the same way than the trials for the SATA III disk.

So it seems not to be the type of SATA interface.

[idata]

What drive are you booting from? Sometimes in the BIOS, it isn't always obvious. Some boards will put a tiny program on a boot drive to tell windows that the system drive is separate. This would probably keep you from using the SSD correctly.

If you unplug the SSD, does your system boot? That would verify if that is preventing RST from working.

Also, if you see in BIOS (technically UEFI) a boot device like "windows Boot manager", try and change it to the physical hard drive.

-JC

[idata]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone gotten RST to work with with a EFI System Partition (instead of a BIOS System Partition, check my earlier post of why and how I used a BIOS System Partition to fix my problem)?

-JC

[idata]

Thanks for your hints.

I just unplugged the SSD and the boot was successful. In addition I checked the BIOS and there the boot device is the physical hard drive.

So I assume, the PC is booting from the HDD.

Andreas

[idata]

hmmm, I feel your pain. I spent several days working on it. It took me a while to figure out the fix for my system. You may want to try Intel support. They weren't bad, but I already found a fix for the problem when I spoke to them.

-JC

[idata]

Today I got an answer form Intel support:

"Please verify that the sata controller on the board is set to "raid" in the BIOS."

This was the first I did, beforte I started installation of Windows.

So let's hope, they have additional ideas. I'm lost, as I cannot find any further hint in this forum.

Regards

Andreas

[idata]

With my 3rd Windows installation I was succesful!

Unfortunately I am not sure, waht the reason is for this.

The only difference I am aware of is, that after installation of Windows I did not install all Intel drivers, I found for the motherboard (DZ68DB), but only the chipset drivers, the graphics drivers and the RST drivers.

With this I was able to accelerate my HDD.

The installations before I installed all Intel drivers before I trided to accelerate my HDD. Means in addition to the ones mentioned above the ME drivers, the network drivers, the audio drivers and the USB 3.0 (Renesas) drivers.

My assumption is now, that one of these drivers disturbs the system in a way, that the activation of acceleration is no more possible.

But installation of these drivers after acceleration of the HDD did not have any negative effect on the acceleration.

Hope this could help someone else.

Regards

Andreas