New SSD drive - fresh install - critical precautions.

Berton said:

Changing a drive from RAID to AHCI or AHCI to RAID requires reinstalling.

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Berton said:

Not directed at me but "been there done that". I was given a Dell Precision desktop with the XEON CPU that had 2 500GB HDDs set as RAID 1. Changing to AHCI in the BIOS prevents booting. Clean install of Win10 on a different drive works fine with BIOS set to AHCI, putting one of the RAID drives back in requires setting the BIOS to RAID before it will boot. Changing a drive from RAID to AHCI or AHCI to RAID requires reinstalling.

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NavyLCDR said:

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

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KingDing said:

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

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Compare Windows 11 Versions: Home & Pro vs. Windows 10 | Microsoft

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