SSD Cache in HP ENVY Phoenix 800-445qe doesn't seem to be installed right

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

If there "ain't no such thing in the control panel" then you didn't install the correct Intel IRST driver. Do that then reboot.

Let's concentrate on the original issue and not some theoretical situation. First things first as they say.

[whosis]

Ah, but I haven't installed anything.  Other than removing a few things like the MS Office trial that I have no need for, shrinking the original single partition, and creating a new partition for backups, this is still the factory-fresh installation.  

I have to get some --wadayah call it--oh, yeah paying work -- done and will have to put off looking at the info you pointed to until later, but will let you know what happens.

Still...as this becomes a growing black hole for my time, the alternative I suggested is looking more and more attractive. 

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

If you are just "trolling" for information then perhaps a different forum is the best place for your theoretical issues.  At any rate, booting from a mSATA has been already covered in different threads.

[whosis]

FIrst, thank you for your efforts so far.  I really do appreciate it. 

To answer your question: No, I'm not tolling in any sense of the word.  I'm just trying to get my computer set up so I can use it.  The fact that it came from HP with an apparently incorrect setup, on top of which Tech support says things like "If it's booting up it's working; I can't do any more for you," and "this is too advanced a question, we're not trained for this sort of thing" and more is even more frustrating.  

I was hoping that someone on this forum might be more knowledgeable--which I think you are, because I've seen a thread where you gave step by step instructions for setting up an SSD with Win8, but also made a comment about a patch being needed for Win7, without going into detail. 

To be clear: I'm just looking for the shortest distance between two points: the point where I am, and the point where I can start actually using the computer and be taking advantage of the SSD I paid for. If switching gears to get it set up in a slightly different configuration than the one I ordered will do that for me, I'm happy to go down the second road.  If getting it set up the way it should have shown up in the first place is faster, I'm happy with that too. My priority here is to be able to get back to earning a living with a working computer, period.  Either approach to setting it up will do that for me.  I just want the one that will do it faster. 

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

As I previously mentioned, booting from mSATA has already been covered in multiple threads. Under the Desktop topics, search on "msata".  Here is an example of one thread where the OP claims success.

I boot from mSATA in UEFI mode using Windows 8.   I can also boot via a PCI-E adapter card.  The same SSD card works in either fashion.

[whosis]

Thanks for that link.  That looks basically like what I had in mind to do with Ghost.  If the SSD drive doesn't show up today, I may try the Intel RST driver installation while I'm waiting.  If it does show up, though, I think I'm going to try that approach first and see if it works for me.  I will report back for other's benefit when I know more. 

[anachromat]

Did you ever get the SSD cache to work?

I appear to be in exactly the same boat, but with a brand new "HP ENVY Phoenix Desktop - 810-445qe".   SSD shows up as disk "E: " with name "DATADRIVE1", and is empty.  Win 7 Pro.   "eccmd.exe" doesn't exist on this box.   The HP Support Assistant says "Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver - x64" version 13.2.0.1016 is installed, but there's no interface to it anywhere I can find (e.g., nothing in Control Panel).  BIOS settings say the hard drive (of which there is exactly one) is in AHCI mode, not RAID mode.

It's all pretty much Greek to me - all I'm sure of is that it's not functioning as a cache (or as anything else 😉 ).

[anachromat]

OK! I may have gotten this working. First back up everything (I made a full system image to an external USB hard drive - although, as things turned out, I didn't need it).

Then run this registry-hacker from Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/922976

That makes changes allowing you to change the disk mode to RAID in the BIOS and still be able to boot Windows.

Restart and get into the BIOS (F10 during startup on my box).

Change disk mode to RAID in the BIOS storage section, save changes, and let it boot into Windows.

Windows automatically installed some new drivers. Reboot required.

Second round of Windows automatically installing some new drivers. Reboot required.

For the rest, followed the instructions here:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227655/how-to-set-up-intel-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching

That went pretty smoothly. Short course: downloaded the latest SRT drivers from Intel and installed them. Reboot required. Opened the SRT application ("Intel Rapid Storage Techology") from the Start menu.

Contrary to the instructions, there was no "Accelerate" tab in the GUI, but there was a "Performance" tab. However, it had no option for doing anything useful. Go to "No acceleration tab showing up for you? Here is the fix!" in the instructions. That said to go into the Windows disk manager and delete the useless volume on the SSD.

After doing that and reopening the SRT app, there was still no "Accelerate" tab in the GUI, but there was a new section under the "Performance" tab that allowed configuring the SSD as a cache. It all _looks_ like it's functioning as intended now, and the SSD no longer shows up at all under the Windows disk manager (& drive letter E: is no longer in use).

All obvious to the most casual observer - LOL 😉

LATER:   Windows boots much faster now, so I'm sure the cache is working fine.  There was nothing hard about it, just a fair number of highly obscure steps, complicated by that there's sooooo much obsolete info sitting on various websites.   Luckily, poke-&-hope usually wins in the end 

[anachromat]

Followup: the SSD cache is great. However, it appears to have screwed up Sleep mode, and I can't repair that.

What happens: whenever the system is put to sleep, approximately 10 minutes later it wakes up again. Every time. "powercfg -lastwake" has no idea why, and neither do the Power-Troubleshooter entries in the System log (Event Viewer - "Wake Source: Unknown"). This is in hybrid sleep mode, and so a hibernation file is written out first before the system sleeps. When the system wakes up, it does not wake up directly, but resumes Windows from the hibernation file.

If I disable hybrid sleep, it's much worse: then it still wakes up after 10 minutes, but reboots Windows from scratch, rebuilding the SSD state first and then giving a boot screen complaining that Windows didn't shut down cleanly - would I like to start Windows normally or do some kind of recovery? (I start normally, of course.)

So that's just FYI if someone else is in this boat. Hibernation works fine, it's just Sleep that's hosed.

As to something else waking the system up, not that I can tell. I disabled wake-up timers; disabled "magic packet" LAN wakeups in the BIOS _and_ in the network adapter properties; ensured that no scheduled task of any kind has the "Wake the computer to run this task" box checked; and even removed all devices from all USB ports (keyboard, mouse, UPS, monitor, external hard drive). Nothing made any difference to the "wake up after 10 minutes, and restore from hibernation file instead of directly from sleep mode" behaviors.

The good news is that Windows booting is so fast with the SSD cache that I don't really much mind that Sleep is hosed. On a laptop I'd care, but not on this desktop box.

[whosis]

I came back to this thread to check something and see that  I never did what I promised about leaving info about how I solved the problem.  Here it is:

When the 128GB SSD I mentioned arrived, I installed it, was impressed enough by the speed that i bought a second drive--250GB this time--wound up setting the 250 GB SSD as drive C, the 128GB SSD as drive D, and use the HD that came with the system for backups.  I turns out that Samsung SSDs (and probably competitors as well) come with utilities that automate the process of copying the contents of your current Drive C to the SSD so you can boot from it.  Setting up a second SSD is just like setting up a HD as far as formatting, partitioning, etc, although there are some settings in Windows you need to change to take best advantage of the drive.  (Search on Google for "optimising SSD" for some good step by step articles on the subject.)  So basically I have to thank HP for a) installing the supposed SSD Cache as a drive instead of a cache, and b) having such incompetent tech support that they drove me to the solution I found.  Thanks to HP's mistakes, in short, I have a kick-ass computer that's fast enough to keep me happy for the foreseeable future.