How to set up Intel Rapid Storage Technology drive caching

[leephilipm]

Hi,

I have recently restored my laptop (HP Envy Touchsmart 4-1202ea Ultrabook) using the an HP recovery USB. Everything has gone fine but I cannot accelerate my HDD with the inbuild SSD using Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

SSD is recognised and can be configured as a caching device but when trying to select my HDD to accelerate I get the following error no matter what I try:

"An unknown error occurred while an operation was in progress. The operation could not be completed."

Any ideas on how I can get this to work?

Thanks

[RTJame]

I ran into that same "An unknown error occurred while an operation was in progress. The operation could not be completed" error myself trying to accelerate the 32GB mSATA drive in an HP Envy Sleekbook (Win8.0) that was complaining that the acceleration was misconfigured.   The error turned out to be the result of my choosing "whole disk" as my "how much of the disk?" acceleration option. When I chose the alternative "18GB" option, acceleration went through without issues. The mSata was partitioned with 18GBs as the accelerated cache and the remainder (about 12GBs) as standard (but very fast) storage. 

I have since read elsewhere that if you shrink the main HDD's C: partition to be 20MBs smaller, then expand it back to its original size, the MBR is rewritten in such a way that the "whole disk" option will work, also.  I haven't tried that yet, but plan to in the very near future.  I have a similar test system that developed the dreaded "3F0" error issue of being unable to find a bootable device, even though thorough F2 diagnostics of the HDD and mSATA media shows both to be in good working order. I plan to use an Acronis boot USB key to access the OS, as per the instructions I have lately read.   I am hoping this works.  I have yet to figure out what is causing the 3F0 error issue to begin with, but I suspect it is the Win8.1 upgrade or some preparatory OS update you get just before the 8.1 upgrade.  

I will try to report back with the results.

[SALIMAC]

When using Rapid Start and Smart Response there is an exact order that you must follow because installing Smart Response can destroy all the partitions on the SSD.

Preparing the SSD
Lets make sure the SSD is exactly as we want it

1. Make sure your BIOS is set to “Intel Rapid Response Technology” as the SATA/Disk Operation mode
2. If you don’t already have the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software installed then you will need to download “SetupRST.exe” software from Intel’s website chose the latest drive in the search should be 12.9 or higher.
3. Chose the SetupRST.exe download.
4. Install and run the software, you will have to reboot after the install.
5. Next we need to check to make sure our SSD is not configured at all in Intel Rapid Storage Manager software
6. Open the Intel Rapid Storage Manager software and go to the acceleration section and make sure you reset the SSD to available. You should see your entire SSD listed in the diagram on the right top with no partitions. Note, you might not have to do this, the option will only be there if you had a configuration from before.
7. You will receive an dialog about resetting the cache to available. Just say yes.
8. Once we know the SSD is clean of any Intel partitions we need to re-initialize it.
9. Open a command prompt and type “diskpart”
10. Type “list disk”
11. Look at the list of disks one of them will be your SSD (You can tell by looking at the size, for me its 32 GB)
12. You will want to select the disk by its disk number that is to the left.
13. Type “select disk 1″ (for my case it’s disk 1 for you it could be a different number)
14. You should get a response that “Disk 1 is now the selected disk”
15. To verify you have the right disk type “list disk” and you should see a “*” in the left margin beside your SSD to show it is the one that is selected. Make sure you do this to makes sure you have the right disk selected because the next step will wipe the device!!
16. If you are sure you have the correct disk selected type “clean”
17. You should receive a message that “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.”
18. What this did was make sure the that SSD is set to uninitialized and no partitions exist on it.
19. You can close DiskPart window
20. Open Disk Management to initialize the disk. You can open it from Control Panel > Administrative Tools
21. You should get a popup stating that you need to initialize the disk first before you can use it. If not you can right click on the label for the disk it and chose Initialize Disk.
22. Make sure you select MBR (Master Boot Record) as the style of partition and click okay.
23. You should now see your SSD listed in Disk Manager

Setting up Smart Response

1. In Disk Manager right click on the very last partition on the HDD (Not the SSD but the HDD) and chose “Shrink Volume…” from the menu
2. You can shrink the volume by any size from what I have read but I normally do it by 1 GB.
3. Seclect “Shrink”
4. Once you have shrunk the partition you can Right click on it again and chose “Extend Volume”.
5. You will then use all the space up to extend it to the end of the drive again.
6. You can then run the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software and go to the “Accelerate” section
7. click “Enable Acceleration”
8. In the dialog that comes up it will ask how big you want your Caching memory to be. For me I have a 32 GB SSD and 8 GB of memory so I need 8 GB for my Rapid Start partition so just subtract that from the total size of the SSD to find out how big you can make your Memory Cache. So in my case I made a  custom 21.8 GB partition. Worse case you get it wrong you can come back and play with the numbers to make it right.
9. I chose maximized mode as I want the best speed form my machine! Make sure you read the warning for your to make sure this is the setting for you! This option is a your choice.
10. You should then see that your disk is accelerated and everything is marked as working and in good health in the software.

Setting up Rapid Start

Now that the Smart Response is up and running we can create our Rapid Start Partition. Intel recommends making this partition the same size or more as the amount of memory that is installed in your computer.  They recommend just making a 8192 GB partition as this will always work for all configurations but you can play to see what works best for you!

1. Open a command prompt and run “Diskpart”
2. Type “list disk” you should see a list of disks. Note that your SSD will now show up as a smaller disk as the step before has created a partition for memory cache. Remember the Disk Number that is listed beside it.
3. Select the disk by typing “select disk 1″ for me it’s disk 1 for you it could be a different number
4. Verify that you have selected the correct disk by typing “list disk” and you will see an “*” beside the disk you have selected
5. Now we are going to create the partition type “create partition primary size=8192″
6. You should see a success message “DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition”
7. We need to now set the ID of the disk “set id=84 override”
8. Again you should see a message that  it succeeded, if you get an error “The specified type is not in the correct format.” then this is because when you initialized the disk you did not set it to MBR you set it to “GPT” you will have to go back to the beginning and follow each set and make sure you set it to a MBR when you initialize the SSD.
9. Once you are done you can reboot your computer for the EFI or BIOS to see the new partition.
10. You can enter your setup to see that Intel Rapid Start is now enabled. Once you have verified this you can go back into Windows.
11. Download and install the Rapid Start Software from Intel’s site
12. You should receive no error now when installing
13. You are finished!!!!!

[NateSomers]

These isntructions were very helpful.

I found that the newer version of RST directly from Intel's site did not work with the HP Envy 4-1015dx that I was working on. I had to download the older version from HP support/drivers site for this model.