Dell Precision 351 Laptop UEFI; NVMe; Intel Rapid Storage Technolgy confusion...

Win v 22H2

Hello All,

I'm not all that familiar with NVMe and RAID (when applied to a single physical drive); so what I'm finding in my UEFI settings has left me confused. Reading up on these technologies has helped, but their interaction due to this BIOS setup is still a problem...

Booting into the UEFI I find the following in the display:
My Questions/Comments appear in brackets.

BIOS v 1.25.0

BIOS display page:
Intel ((R) RST 17.5.3.4231 RAID Driver [RAID capable driver is loaded?]
Non-RAID Physical Disks: PCIe 1.0 PC SN730 NVMe WDC 512GB [this physical drive is NOT RAID capable]

STATUS: NON-RAID
controller Type: NVMe
controller interface: PCIe

[Q. installed SSD disk connected via NVMe interface to PCIe bus and NOT using SATA CONTROLLER???]

[BIOS Settings page:]
Settings-General-Sys Config-SATA Operation: o Disabled o AHCI x RAID ON
(additional info displayed onscreen):
RAID ON: SATA config'd support RAID Mode (Intel Rapid Restore Tech)
[Q. RAID ON config selected (see below), the SATA CONTROLLER is now used??? ]

SATA operation o disabled o AHCI x RAID ON

DRIVES: enable/disable various drives onboard
x SATA-1 x SATA-2 x SATA-4
x M.2 PCIe SSD-0 x M.2 PCIe SSD-1
[Q. although it states (see above)"drives onboard" enabled, the *only* drive I have installed is an NVMe.
Does this actually enable/disable M.2 sockets and SATA controllers so these "various drives" will function when a drive is actually installed???]

Thanks for reading the above, and also to anyone who can provide helpful info!

Tom

NVME vs SATA these are the interface types for the SSDs
RAID is only useful if you have more than disk, you're computer will use all available disks connected, but RAID specifically needs to be configured. It doesn't really matter if the setting is on or not.

I'm assuming this is a desktop computer? I would imagine the enable/disable is just referring to enabling or disabling those M.2 or sata ports.

Also M.2 is actually a form factor so your NVME is likely a m.2 (form factor) drive

neemobeer said:

(snip)

I'm assuming this is a desktop computer? I would imagine the enable/disable is just referring to enabling or disabling those M.2 or sata ports.

(snip)

Click to expand...

Per the thread title, "Dell Precision 351 Laptop".

Google doesn't find a Precision 351. Is that correct?

As stated, there is no Dell Precision 351 Laptop. There is a 3551 or 3510 is one of these your Precision Laptops?
Also as stated, Dell usually sets the HDD setting to RAID even for a single drive laptop

bobkn said:

Per the thread title, "Dell Precision 351 Laptop".

Google doesn't find a Precision 351. Is that correct?

Click to expand...

Thanks, bobkn. The computer is a Dell Precision 3451 laptop. I didn't notice that the 4 was missing from the model number. I tried to correct the model number and discovered that the keyboard "4" key no longer worked. Popped it off cleaned underneath and it's now working. Sorry about that, folks.

From what I've read online and per the responses above, it would be better for me to change SATA OPERATION options from "RAID ON" to "AHCI". However, when I click on "ACHI" in the SATA OPERATION field, I receive a warning: "This change may prevent OS from booting or require a reinstall." From my research I have found that a complete OS reinstall is frequently required after making this change.

Is there any way I can switch UEFI from RAID ON to AHCI and still be able to boot from the current installed OS?

Ed McCauley said:

Thanks, bobkn. The computer is a Dell Precision 3451 laptop. I didn't notice that the 4 was missing from the model number. I tried to correct the model number and discovered that the keyboard "4" key no longer worked. Popped it off cleaned underneath and it's now working. Sorry about that, folks.

From what I've read online and per the responses above, it would be better for me to change SATA OPERATION options from "RAID ON" to "AHCI". However, when I click on "ACHI" in the SATA OPERATION field, I receive a warning: "This change may prevent OS from booting or require a reinstall." From my research I have found that a complete OS reinstall is frequently required after making this change.

Is there any way I can switch UEFI from RAID ON to AHCI and still be able to boot from the current installed OS?

Click to expand...

I've never switched from RAID mode to AHCI without re-installing Windows, but supposedly it can be done fairly easily. A discussion here leads to:


Note that you may not need to do this. It's not clear to me that having the BIOS set to RAID does harm.

bobkn said:

I've never switched from RAID mode to AHCI without re-installing Windows, but supposedly it can be done fairly easily. A discussion here leads to:
Note that you may not need to do this. It's not clear to me that having the BIOS set to RAID does harm.

Click to expand...

With a single drive set to RAID rather than AHCI, the only negative factor that I am hearing about is a slight reduction in speed.

My son wants to dual-boot to Windows and Ubuntu. While discussing the problems he has encountered, I realized I need to extend my knowledge of UEFI. Looking at my own "BIOS" some of the settings mean nothing to me, and I don't like that.

I'd like to be able to dual-boot one of these days, so reading tutorials reveals what I need to learn. The first step to dual-booting seems to be switching the SATA controller from RAID ON to AHCI. As soon as I understand how to do that without reinstalling windows I'll make the change. If I don't have any issues after a reasonable amount of time I'll move onto the next step in preparation for adding Ubuntu.

The tutorials tell me to get rid of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology because it's a problem with Ubuntu. There's a good chance here of being unable to reboot without re-installing windows. Hopefully, the link you provided will correct this problem.

See if this helps Install dual boot ubuntu with windows 10 and RAID on