RAID vs. AHCI/NVMe Setting In Dell Inspiron Notebook BIOS

Topic

New Reply

I just got a brand-new Dell Inspiron 16 7610 notebook with Windows 11 Pro, an Intel i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM and a single 1TB NVMe SSD (with no plans to add another one, even if it was somehow possible). The default storage setting in the BIOS is RAID but if you have no other RAID discs in your system (that’s the point of RAID, right) what advantage, if any, would you get from using a RAID configuration, other than being able to utilize the Intel RST driver? I don’t much care either way; I just want the one that will give me the best speed and the least “driver hassle” going forward. If I don’t have to mess with an additional Intel RST driver, then so much the better, the way I look at it. I have no plans to use any external drives except a Western Digital My Passport Ultra to make backups on. Just wondering what take the “storage geeks” have on this?

Reply | Quote

Replies

Travasurus,

I have all Dell machines (4) and I’ve set all to ACHI and they operate flawlessly.
I also don’t see the need for RAID. I also have a Synology DS220+ NAS and that does use Raid 1 (Mirroring) that all users/machines on my home network has access to and that also works great.

HTH

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

Travasaurus

Reply | Quote

Thinking exactly along those same lines, but I’m hanging loose for some additional “corroborating evidence”. I can see Dell doing this for a desktop, which is easy-enough to add a coupla extra drives to (even though my XPS 8930 desktop has 4 total, all running just fine in ACHI mode), but not a notebook, which nobody (in their right mind) would ever want to “crack a case” on if they didn’t have to, especially (in an attempt to) install another SSD…

Reply | Quote

Dell always do this. 99% of the time I will change it back to AHCI and let the Windows built-in storage drivers do their thing. The only time I’d leave this enabled is if the laptop has an Intel Optane SSD, as RAID mode is needed for Optane to work properly. As a result, RAID mode will also override the NVMe storage drivers to use Intel’s RAID driver instead.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Travasaurus, wavy

Reply | Quote

The settings is RAID – Redundant Array of Intelligent Devices or AHCI – Advanced Host Controller Interface. The little bit of intelligence in the former when enabled likely lifts a small load from the CPU by enabling the UEFI code operating the highly integrated drive controller to handle bitlocker encryption in the hardware instead of the CPU (via Windows) having to do those calculations through its internal (less cryptography optimised) workings (which I guess could present a future security issue, placing this setting selection for hardware data handling in line with using a TPM to handle the cryptographic keys.. and the Windows 11 OS it came with..)

Might be interesting to run a before and after storage speed benchmark to see if it changes, and to see if the Windows 11 offering is affected I guess if anyone happens to have a good spec Windows 10 machine they want to investigate on..

1 user thanked author for this post.

Travasaurus

Reply | Quote

oldguy wrote:

Redundant Array of Intelligent Devices

Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

Setting up RAID is not just a matter of selecting RAID instead of AHCI in UEFI.  A RAID controller and at least two drives is necessary.  Many Intel chipsets support RAID with a motherboard-based RAID controller.  That’s what I used when I built my NAS.  In order to use this controller (after selecting RAID instead of AHCI in UEFI), one must hit Ctrl + I immediately after reboot to expose the RAID configuration interface.  There, the number of disks and the type of RAID array can be selected.

Where a motherboard-based RAID controller is not available, one must use a hardware RAID controller, which will have its own interface for setup.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

Travasaurus

Reply | Quote

bbearren is right by the way – there is no conflict in the answer.

Perhaps I should have explained, I was specifically answering the question in the original post “…what advantage, if any, would you get from using a RAID configuration, other than being able to utilize the Intel RST driver?” – the short answer is basically it removes the bitlocker workload from the CPU/Windows to the storage subsystem..

There’s probably next to nothing in it but it ups the Dell a little past the opposition in the benchmarks I suspect, so does it really matter how they describe the operation you are selecting in the setup page – it might as well say “Windows 7/ Windows 8” and “Windows 10/Windows 11”, in the same way as some old school Compaq machines had none of those settings, just “legacy” (for DOS, Windows 98, Linux) or “Windows XP”..  As said if anyone was prepared to try to cross the mire (as a reinstall might be needed?) and benchmark the results, it would be technically interesting.

I think Dell support would argue there is an array, it has a single intelligent disk as member and you could add another drive should you want the operational redundancy (or to state the converse, it’s a RAID 1 mirror configuration where one drive has been removed which doesn’t complain all the time as the alarm is turned off..)

I guess you could check how it’s configured if you check in the RAID interface bbearren mentions (which might be well hidden or maybe as on some older Dells, accessed through the machine’s F2  BIOS) – though the machines I worked on all had a single drive unless you specifically requested the machine  built with the option installed from Dell (Dell configurator..).

Also you probably need to note the drivers would be different as changing the controller configuration changes the plug and play configuration, (both device ID and capability information) so different drivers would be required, though you can expect the drivers Dell provide through UEFI probably cater for all the settings the BIOS supports. Switch off UEFI and  reinstalling Windows gets a whole lot messier as you need to find a F6 driver if its not provided by Windows.

Looking at what steeviebops indicated (though the specs would indicate optane is less likely:https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/inspiron-16-plus-laptop/spd/inspiron-16-7610-laptop)  The info such as I found on Intel Optane implementations is at

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/support/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory/https:/www.intel.la/content/www/uk/en/support/articles/000024018/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html

Note under “Questions Related to Various Usage Cases”

In the specific case “What happens if I remove the Intel® Optane™ memory module from my system after I enable it?”

The answer “The volume (module + drive being accelerated) will go offline to protect user data. You won’t be able to use this volume until the module is placed back in the system.”

I guess that’s a second reason why there is often a specific BIOS option to secure erase the drives on these systems.. if the Dell engineer changes the main board (or you try to transfer a drive, even to an “identical” machine) there is no way of getting to the volume, even in its encrypted state. It seems you might have to destroy the content before the drive will supply any information to other than its original controller. Basically I read that as if the main board dies the drive content will effectively go with it. Why else use the specific phrase “the system” ?

That might be something worth checking (by transferring a drive and seeing if another machine with the technology can use it, obviously!).

You have to wonder at things getting more and more secure to prevent data theft while efforts to ensure the extra security is “user interactive” to prevent data loss when something breaks seem to be left behind.. it’s all going to be in the cloud it seems, even the OS.

Must admit the workaday systems I configured largely lacked the technology (had the option but a lowly M2 SSD fitted, often Micron) so I never got to trying data recovery from an Optane system drive but it seems without a sound backup you might be slightly slower, but better off, without it.

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Travasaurus

Reply | Quote

End of the story: After much research here and via other technical hardware Internet sources, I went ahead and switched to ACHI in the BIOS (which did indeed require a reformat, as expected) and it works like a champ, with no noticeable speed loss (but then again, this is a basic business machine, primarily used for email, word processing and Web access, not for graphics or engineering purposes). What I think got lost in some of the other posts was that this was a Dell Inspiron notebook computer containing a single 1TB NVMe SSD and with certainly no plans to install a 2nd one in it, if such was even possible. I could simply see no reason to use a RAID setting for only a single drive (not to mention having to mess around with that Intel “Rapid Storage Technology” driver potentially bogging-down the system). My takeaway is that Dell does this as some sort of “standardization” manufacturing routine and perhaps in the event that a “just in case” scenario ever arose where such was needed. I just feel that it’s highly unlikely that a 2nd drive would ever be added to a super-thin form factor notebook computer, particularly as much of a nightmare as it is to “crack the case” on those things these days; I sure wouldn’t want to have to attempt it. At any rate, I appreciate all the input and helpful advice which was dispensed here.

Reply | Quote