Angelica 2) M3970AM motherboard support for ssd appears to have issues with RAID VS achi

[Decour53]

It appears in the bios my hitachi hard drice is set to Raid. When adding a ssd as another hard drive, the bios recognizes it but windows 8.1 does not. Changing the hard drive to achi or ide causes pc not to boot. How do i get win 8.1 to recognize the ssd ??

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Please post the HP product number for your PC. How to Find the HP Model Number and the HP Product Number or let HP automatically find your PC model number and HP network attached printers. This will allow others to review your issue, make suggestions and review your responses. This is usually the best way to get assistance.

It's perfectly OK with newer PCs to have the SATA mode set to RAID when using a SSD.

Boot ino the BIOS and Disable Secure Boot, save the setting and reboot.

Go into Disk Management and look for the SSD. If you see it, then it probably needs to be initialized and formatted.  If you don't see it, then the SSD or cable may be faulty.  There is an outside chance that there might be a BIOS setting issue but then that when mean a default setting was changed.

[Decour53]

Model# h8-1414. Serial 4ce2380bb6...please note we have nvr entered bios and made changes other than the Raid to IDE test.
We are using this as a secondary SSD drive crucial mx100. We disable secure boot. Shut down server and added ssd. Started server back up. Took a while because it always wants to do a scan disk. Went to disk management, no disk.
Went back into the bios., went diagnostics, selected hard drive test, Ata crucial shows up. Performed test. Test completed.
Which brings me to your last point....defaults were set next and again a restart. No luck.

In general we are pretty savvy when it comes to these things and i feel comfortable in saying that this motherboard probably does not support this ssd drive. I have seen several posts with similar issues and it appears to be related to raid and achi not playing well together on this chipset. With that said, if you have some more insight i will try it but it appears this bios has very few options for making manual chnages, eg.. Ports, i/o, et. Not sure what disabling secure boot even did if anything.

[Decour53]

I forgot to mention i used the same ssd drive on my friends asus board and it came up in windows 8 with no issues.
Not sure if the crucial just has issues with this motherboard even though the bios sees it. I can actually select that drive in the bios, but does not allow me to do anything with it other than test. I can only assume theres no way to specify one drive as raid, and the ssd as achi?

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Take the SSD over to your friend's PC and try the following:

Open up the run window and enter:

diskpart

list disk

select disk x -----> where x equals the SSD

clean

exit

Now initialize and format the SSD and then try it in your PC.  If this doesn't work then try removing the CMOS battery for 30 seconds. You might want to measure the battery and see if it reads 3.3+ volts or better. If not then you might want to replace it.

I have seen very few SSDs not work in PCs.  I have a Crucial and it did require a firmware upgrade which wasn't available at the time.  I had to post the issue on the Crucial forum mentioning that I was going to ask a couple of leading PC magazines for advice. Within a week a had a firmware update.

[Decour53]

I like your idea about the pc magazine post. I did post on crucial and awaiting feedback. There are a bunch of posts regarding this same issue with this same ssd so i feel fairly comfortable where the issue lies. With that said, i notice someone tried to enable achi via the registry, as the hp install, installs hdd as raid. This may allow me to change the mode to achi. I might give that a try next. It apparently worked for them.

[Decour53 · Accepted solution]

I was able to find a solution. I will share.
Boot into bios, change sata mode from raid to achi. Save and exit.
Immediately boot up into safe mode.
This will allow drivers to update. Restart computer.
Windows 8 now comes up. Device manager shows SSD drive.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Your claimed solution is really not much of a solution since ACHI is a subset of RAID.  If you couldn't get the SSD to work with RAID on a newer mothrboard then you have other issues that a not driver related.

[Decour53]

I would agree but neither was disabling security in the bios. If it works whom am i to complain. One thing i did notice was a overall improvement of the hdd as well. Not sure the benefit of HP installing as RAID with only one hard drive. But in any case, everything appears to be working as expected.

[Big_Dave]

Your claim the AHCI solved the issue is IMHO a "red herring".