New SSD drive - fresh install - critical precautions.

Dell latitude 5590 laptop.

Currently rocking Windows 11 Home OEM. (Upgraded from 10 Home OEM).

Current Ssd is 256gb. Ripping it out and inserting a brand new, factory fresh (blank) 2TB SSD in its place.

I will be buying a win 11 pro key from ElectronicsFirst.

OS install - Windows media creation tool with Win 11 Pro Retail key.

It will be a fresh/clean install.

I haven't done this on a Win 11 machine before.

I am asking for guidance on the critical settings I need to change, before fresh os installation:

(e.g Bios settings such as Raid/Ahci, tpm modifications/clearing, secure boot settings etc. + anything else that needs changing like bitlocker on/off etc etc).

Then, once 11 PRO Retail is on - what settings do I need to change back?

My thanks to any willing to guide.

KD

Just to start with, Dell support said that if the bios setting is set to Raid - I should change it to AHCI - until the install is complete.

Then, once complete - set it back to Raid.

I have no idea if I need to turn secure boot on or off. I have no idea if TPM needs to be cleared.

Asking for guidance on how to get this right.

Do you need RAID? Do have or will you have 2 or more drives IN the computer? My experience came with an early install of Win10, had 2 drives in the case and Win10 automatically picked the RAID part of the BIOS setting for AHCI/RAID. Later removal of the second drive broke the booting process, had to reinstall with only one drive in the case. I later added another drive for storage but did not change the BIOS. The only RAID I use now is RAID 1 on a 2-disk NAS drive attached to my Router. RAID 0 stripes data across 2 or more drives to increase storage, lose one and all data is lost. RAID 1 is mirroring, second drive is a duplicate of first drive but total capacity of 2 x 2TB drives is 2TB. There's other type of RAID.

RAID​

RAID is a data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple physical disk drive components into one or more logical units for the purposes of data redundancy, performance improvement, or both. This is in contrast to the previous concept of highly reliable mainframe disk drives referred to as "single large expensive disk". Wikipedia

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Dell ships with raid by default for some dumb reason on most of their machines (Even laptops with one drive slot!). Set it to ahci, and turn on secure boot and tpm in the bios. (probably already enabled) Then install windows 11 on the drive. Make any windows changes you like, run through all windows updates etc. Then Download and Run dell support assist if you want an easy way to get all the latest drivers.

Done. Enjoy

Many discussions about the RAID thing. If you're not going to use RAID then it doesn't need to be ON. There may be some specific instances where it is required especially if using the not supported anymore Optane Drives. TPM shouldn't need to be tweaked but you never know. Secure Boot is a requirement for Win11 but the requirement for it to be Secure Boot capable, not necessarily ON.
The one question is do you desire to have to use a Microsoft Account during install? Unless you use one of the several methods to bypass that Microsoft Account during the install process you'll have to enter that to fully install Win11. The thought is generally to use a Local Acct to sign in to the OS vs using your Microsoft acct.

BamaInArk said:

The one question is do you desire to have to use a Microsoft Account during install? Unless you use one of the several methods to bypass that Microsoft Account during the install process you'll have to enter that to fully install Win11. The thought is generally to use a Local Acct to sign in to the OS vs using your Microsoft acct.

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Keep secure boot on. Also, They have windows 11 pro, they can just hit other option to sign in and click domain join. Then enter the user info and password they want and that skips the account creation.

A) Do I need to clear the TPM? (Installing PRO where previous drive was HOME).

B) I prefer Local Account to MS account.

C) This Dell Laptop came with Raid enabled - yet it only has one drive. I do not understand why.

A. I don't think that needs to be done. The Operating System reads the BIOS to know about the resources it has to work with. I've not cleared it on either of mine.

B. That can be done, go ahead and install Windows then after it's working go into Accounts/Users and set up a new User with a slightly different name then reboot into the new User and remove the original User.

C. I've had issue with installing when RAID was active in the BIOS, I'd set it to AHCI on a Notebook as most can't handle a second internal drive. An issue with 2 drives set as RAID and one fails the machine either won't boot or if one drive fails all is lost [RAID 0 striping]. RAID 1 is mirroring, second drive copy of first drive and removal of one causes boot issue [been there and done that].

KingDing said:

C) This Dell Laptop came with Raid enabled - yet it only has one drive. I do not understand why.

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Dell defaults to RAID for the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) driver. You can switch to AHCI as others have mentioned, which uses the Windows native driver. Doing so means lower performance though.

pseymour said:

Dell defaults to RAID for the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) driver. You can switch to AHCI as others have mentioned, which uses the Windows native driver. Doing so means lower performance though.

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thats been the opposite of my experience with over 300+ DELL's. Interesting. Maybe it is so little its not noticable?

KingDing said:

A) Do I need to clear the TPM? (Installing PRO where previous drive was HOME).

B) I prefer Local Account to MS account.

C) This Dell Laptop came with Raid enabled - yet it only has one drive. I do not understand why.

Click to expand...

A. No but you can if you want.

B. With windows 11 pro, you can just hit other option set up for work or school, then sign in options and click domain join. Then enter the user info and password you want and that skips the account creation.

C. It is the intel rapid storage driver as pseymour pointed out, but we disagree on the reason. See above.

My latest computer with the IRST which includes Optane memory, has less storage available on the 512GB NVMe drive than just what the formatting does:

andrew129260 said:

thats been the opposite of my experience with over 300+ DELL's. Interesting. Maybe it is so little its not noticable?

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Could be, depending on other things in the system. We have a little over 6,000 Dells, and we had to decide whether to switch to AHCI or integrate the RST driver, so we ran a few different benchmarks and kept the "RAID."

One thing to note on the Windows 11 install. The computer has a product key for Windows 10/11 Home stored in BIOS. The standard Windows setup will read that key and not give you any options - it will install Windows 10 or 11 Home without asking you to change it. In order to prevent that, on the USB drive for installing Windows you need to create a text file in the root directory, it needs to be called ei.cfg

It needs to contain the lines:
[Channel]
Retail

andrew129260 said:

thats been the opposite of my experience with over 300+ DELL's. Interesting. Maybe it is so little its not noticable?

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It's been up for more than a decade now... and it's still going: Performance of the Intel RST/RSTe AHCI/RAID Drivers

hdmi said:

It's been up for more than a decade now... and it's still going: Performance of the Intel RST/RSTe AHCI/RAID Drivers

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Thanks for that

If not yet upgraded there was a BIOS February 2024 upgrade:

KingDing said:

Current Ssd is 256gb. Ripping it out and inserting a brand new, factory fresh (blank) 2TB SSD in its place.

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You should keep that SSD as a backup if anything should happen to the 2TB one.
I know it's not the Pro version but, it does have the original OEM backup file on it.

pseymour said:

You can switch to AHCI as others have mentioned, which uses the Windows native driver.

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If one switches to AHCI and completes the clean install, can the machine later be changed back to RAID without issues?

no

kennybb said:

no

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If you were replying to me, would you please elaborate?