R13 (R7-371T) Raid 0

I have read many reviews that mention that the R13 is setup as Raid 0. I want to purchase R 13 (R7-371T-78UV) which the specs indicate 256GB drive. Does this mean that this model will come with a single 256GB drive installed and I have the option to add an additional drive in the future in the slot that would have been used to setup for Raid 0? To be more specific, can I add another drive without the Raid 0 setting such that I can get the benefit from additional hard drive space to the already 256GB available? I read a review that indicated that the OS would have to be installed again in order to override a Raid 0 setting. I didn't realize that a Raid 0 could be set unless 2 drives were present but then I'm a novice.

Accepted answers

marathondon

There is a correction to the initial response you provided about having 2 128gb drives with a RAID 0 setting. That method was done on Haswell based Aspire. The model I asked about is Broadwell Aspire model and comes with a single Kingston256GB M.2 drive (Kingston RBU-SNS8100S3256GD) which is custom for Acer after chatting with Kingston. I believe the dimenions of the Samsung Model match the Kingston so I should be able to clone the drive and use the larger drive. I would guess that I could wipe the Kingston and place it in the secondary slot and use it as additonal storage since I'm not intereted in having a RAID 0 setup. Do you agree?

I found information about drive here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-R13-R7-371T-Notebook-Review.137495.0.html

All comments

-Justin

marathondon,

This system has two 128 GB SSDs installed, set up in Raid 0.

marathondon

Justin

Can I copy the OS to a SAMSUNG 850 EVO MZ-N5E500BW M.2 500GB SATA drive and then remove the 2 128GB drives so that I will have 500GB of drive space as opposed to 128GB?

-Justin

marathondon,

Are you asking if you can install two 256 GB SSDs in the system as an upgrade? I think if you create your recovery media and give it a try you could, we've tested 128, 256, and 512 GB SSDs on this system.

marathondon

There is a correction to the initial response you provided about having 2 128gb drives with a RAID 0 setting. That method was done on Haswell based Aspire. The model I asked about is Broadwell Aspire model and comes with a single Kingston256GB M.2 drive (Kingston RBU-SNS8100S3256GD) which is custom for Acer after chatting with Kingston. I believe the dimenions of the Samsung Model match the Kingston so I should be able to clone the drive and use the larger drive. I would guess that I could wipe the Kingston and place it in the secondary slot and use it as additonal storage since I'm not intereted in having a RAID 0 setup. Do you agree?

I found information about drive here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-R13-R7-371T-Notebook-Review.137495.0.html

marathondon

Justin

Is it possible to switch from RAID to AHCI mode. I believe this requires to reinstall the OS because there will be problems booting up if you make this change in the BIOS. How could I utilize the recovery and make the BIOS change since I don't have a copy of the OS?

97889432

I'm just about to order the Acer R7-371T-50V5, which has the Haswell i5-4210U and a 128 GB SSD. Does the Raid 0 config mean I would have one 128 GB SSD drive and an emply slot that I could use for another 128 GB SSD drive? Sorry to butt into this message thread, but it seemed an appropriate place to ask my question.

marathondon

You were absolutely correct about my compter setup. I found that it was set to RAID 0 with 2 128GB drives. Apparently the review I read and supplied a link to had been setup with a single 256GB drive which is what lead me down the wrong path. The product description had only stated 256GB drive so it was difficult to know what I was getting. With all that said, I have saved the recovery media to a usb drive. Based on your experience can I replace the 2 128GB drives with 2 unformatted 500GB M.2 drives and set the BIOS to boot to the usb drive in order to transfer the RAID 0 configuration to the new drives?

buchhla

I have just got off the phone with Acer and they WILL NOT support RAID on a this laptop if it did not come with a RAID configuration from the factory. And this was from a L2 support person. I find this very dissapointing and unaccaptable and will most likely be returning this laptop and the 2 M2 drives I purchased to put in it.

RAID is functionality built into the chipset, and they do support upgrading the drive. A L1 support person sent me a internal document explaining how to do this, by mistake since they were not supposed to send me it, but Acer will NOT send me the program neeed to enable a RAID volume, as it is for acer intenal technicians only.

What a pile of ****... Smiley Sad

KEHinWA

Its INTEL Chipset.

It uses Intel Rapid Storage Tech

Download the software from INTEL

I have just installed it on my R13. It installed and sees the single drive on INTEL RAID Channel.

So I am ordering a Kingston 120 GB SSD that looks like what is in the machine.

It should work like it does on my other intel machines. Will create the raid system in the OS and move the data as needed on the fly.

buchhla

Good luck!

The problem is Acer disabled the RAID BIOS, so you can't actually create the array. On normal machines, you can hit CTRL-R or something similar while in the boot process to get into the Intel RAID option ROM, which allows you to configure it, but Acer has disabled that. Iverified this from a L2 support technician at Acer, and therfore returned this machine. Acer said they only support RAID on machines that came with RAID enabled from the factory, so if it shipped with a single SSD, you are SOL.

Which is sad, since it was a very nice machine outside of this feature being disabled since Acer didn't want to support it.

KEHinWA

Well I will play with it. Its usually CTRL-I on my other system.

for some reason in BIOS it came with HD controller set to RAID not AHCI and Drivers are now installed as INTEL RAID vs Microsoft AHCI .

Will be interesting to see. Because on my other INTEL RAID machines I am pretty sure I have done most of the management from the OS Which can configure much more complex RAID set ups than BIOS could.

SSD is on order.. I am doing a new KB install on the machine to next weekend. (IF KB gets here) so will install new SSD at same time.

IronFly

you can have 2 type of RAID management:

Software

Hardware

CTRL+i let your enter the Intel hardware RAID management, IRST will just help you monitor RAID health and enable/disable some cache options

if you install IRST on a machine without hardware RAID support and create the array from IRST, it's only software and it's OS related

Some Acer laptops with RAID0 enabled from factory, uses a special SSD that includes 2 controllers on a single SSD, that's why need a special software to create this array, can't be managed by BIOS or IRST software.

buchhla

And you are unable to boot from a software RAID volume, hence my returning the unit... I spent hours going back and forth with Acer support trying to get this to work sadly...

IronFly

yes, that's it.

KEHinWA

This is where I am at:

I have a 2nd Kingston 120 GB ssd.

While they have turned off the standard Ctrl I bios access. The raid bios appears to be active and my machine was shipped with RAID as the default sitting for HD controller vs ACHI.

the comment about "special software" was good hint. Computer makers avoid Special as much as possible. It means less tested etc. So I looked. I suspect the "Special software" the Intel Command line tool for raid bios management.

I have installed that on a bootable Windows recovery USB and it appears to run. The raid CLI tool Detects the HD on raid channel 3 in command line calls it 0030

So probably this weekend I will image the main drive. With Windows recovery.

install the 2nd M/2 card Boot to the USB and create a raid set in the command line. Than use the recover USB to place my image on the RAID 0 drive.

To me it looks like with this bootable USB Command line tool option. Creatiing a bootable RAID 0 drive is possible 70% chance.. assuming they just hid stuff vs turning stuff off (which would increase chance of driver issues so betting they just hid the interface. I suspect I could create a RAID 1 set up if desired from in the OS using sing the GUI tool )

KEHinWA

It worked. As I assumed. Bios tools are hidden but the full BIOS is there. Just need to boot from an USB, and use the command line tool to create the Raid Volume.

This is how you create a RAID 0 Boot volume on the Acer R13 (R7-371t)

Mine came with RAID turned on in the BIOS vs AHCI .

Intall the Intel Rapid Storage Tech Drivers. In this case version 13.x

Get another 128GB drive. Or two matching of anything. (I used a Kingston 120G ( so there are a few GB unued on the original drive.. Oh well.

There is not a spair screw for the second drive so I Used MB screw from the upper right top of the MB. (looking at it face down with the base removed)

Also there is a long ribbon cable across the drives. I had it disconnected already because I just installed a new KB Acer sent me.

Once the drive is installed. Go into the BIOS and confirm it is seen. After that I had it show up in the OS.

Then download the RSTCLI tool.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24310/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Command-Line-Interface-RST-CLI-

Once it is installed creat a system recovry USB to boot from. It will now have the Intel drivers needed to do this.

Put the X64 folder from the download on the root of the drive.

Now make a system image of the boot drive to another USB drive. Because creating the RAID 0 Array wll destroy the data.

Once done that i done.

Use F12 to boot from the Recovery USB. Use the Advance tools to open a command line. Go to \X64

Type

RSTCLI64 -I --Controller

to confirm it sees both drives. The orginal is 0300 and the and the new drive is 0100.

Now type

RSTCLI64 -C -l 0 -n SOMENAMEYOUWANT 0-1-0-0 0-3-0-0

You now have a RAID 0 Volume..

Boot from the Recovery USB again and use the Advanced tool to restore the system volume from the other USB drive Restart and enjoy. The macine is already fast. You will see some increase in App loading and other places

Now the system image leaves the space the the end after the recovery partiion.

Download and install Mini Parition tool to move the recover partition to the end of the dive

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Then I use Windows to extend the C: partiion to fill MOST of the empty area. I left 20 GB.. which will create unused SSD area the SSD can use to remap areas of the SSD that wear out.

Reboot.

Done.

Boot from power off is 5 seconds to login screen. Bascially almost instant after the ACER BIOS Logo is done.

Adobe loads its exensions too fast to read.

jrosaly

KEHinWA,

Your post has been very helpful, but, I've run into a road block, the latest Intel RST driver is 14.6, the one that came preinstalled is 14.5 (my R13 came with win10) and the latest cli tools are 13.2, after installing the driver, and getting the cli tools, I created the recovery disk, but when I reboot and run the cli tool, it says its not compatible with driver version 14.5 or 14.6, should I downgrade the driver in windows 10 to 13.2 then create the recovery disk? Any adv ice or help is appreciated. Thanks.

jros

jrosaly

Hi,

For those of you who want to get raid setup, it works as posted above by KEHinWA, a few caveats just in case, eventhough my laptop did not come with 2 ssd, it came with win10 preloaded with driver version 14.5 preloaded, this ewill not work if you create a recoevry disk, as the latest cli tools are version 13.2 and they won't work with the latest driver, so you need to download the version 13.2 x64 (or x86) disk drivers, now maybe you can load them and over ride the newer drivers in winpe, but I didn't try it, I created a win10 install disk and copied the v13.2 cli tools and the x64 driver folder to the recovery drive. now install your new ssd(s) boot with the win10 install drive and follow the instructions in the previous post exfcept issue the following command to load the driver before creating the new array, drvload c:\pathtoinffile\iaAHCIC.inf. It should all work. This is now really fast, not that it wasn't before.

Matteus

I just got the new skylake r13 and installed 2 samung evo 850. they show up nicely in bios and and windows. also in bios it shows up as sata: raid not AHCI, but i have a problem to make raid 0 volume, when i follow the steps mentioned above, after i enter comman RSTCLI64 -C -l 0 -n raid 0-1-0-0 0-2-0-0 it gives out response: "request is formated correctly but failed to execute" cannot create volume given disk (s). any idieas how to solve it?

jrosaly

Hi Matteus,

If you read my post, which is the one right before your post, It will help you get it done, consider this an edit, cause apparently that's not the entire procedure. So after I got the 2 drives I bought succesfully created as a raid 0 volume, I decided to upgrade and go bigger. So, I followed my own instructions, and it didn't work.WTF?

So, I started thinking about everything I did before I suceeded, and remembered, that in my frustration, after a lot of hours one day, when I was about to give up, I booted once more off the win10 usb drive and decided to launch the windows installer to see how it would see the drives, so I chose custom install and it saw both drives, so I proceeded to click on load drivers and browsed to the folder with the version 13.2 intel rst x64 floppy drivers and selected the drivers and clicked on load, after a whiiilleee, it gave me an error message, so I exited the installation, even more frustrated.

So one more time (without rebooting, went into repaair computer-advanced-command prompt, did a drvload of the driver mentioned in my post above, v13.2, it loaded the drivers and it worked this time.

It doesn't make sense, but it worked. Check your volume identifiers, cause mine show up as 0-1-0-0 and 0-3-0-0, not 0-2-0-0, use rstcli64 -l, so the command would be rstcli64 -C -l 0 -n volumename 0-1-0-0 0-3-0-0. It should give you a volume created message and if you do a rstcli64 -l message again, it should list your newly created raid volume.

Hope this helps.

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