Can't create a RAID 0 partition in bios

Acer:

I just spent about $3,000 on your Triton 700, another $1,000 on dual Samsung Evo 960's, and hours on frustration due to your lock down of the bios.

I want to upgrade the RAID to the Samsung M.2's. Using a restore drive doesn't work as any of your experts will know as it needs the base RAID configuration formatted and recognized in the bios before the restore or a clean Windows install will be able to proceed.

You happily sold be a non upgradable device. Please fix this by telling me how to get to the advanced settings in the bios so I can use all the HW I just bought.

I know what I am doing, I have built machines for decades, including complex RAID arrays, many times. Your lock down of the bios is unwarranted and unwelcome. Please fix this.

Does anyone know the key set to access the advanced bios settings?

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Mweingar

So I just got off the phone with Acer's level 2 support and they claim the Triton 700 is sold "as is" and not user upgradable. This is NOWHERE I can find in the sales material and the online reviews often comment on the ability to upgrade this machine.

To be clear: this is FALSE

What they don't want is customers to have access to the advanced bios settings that allow you to create and edit RAID arrays on the laptop you just purchased with your hard-earned money.

Unacceptable.

I will be pushing this to Linus Tech Tips and every other vlogger I can find to create visibility to this travesty. It suggest the end of the ability to upgrade your device. If your drives fail you can't change them with this policy! How is that acceptable???

Fix your policy Acer.

IronFly

RAID can`t even be created using iRST CLI?
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/385363#Comment_385363

Mweingar

It turns out the iRST CLI is several versions out of date (years) and not an option.

I have created a Windows boot usb and set it up to include the latest Windows version of the RST setup app along with some other tools. Booting to this with the Samsung M.2’s installed allowed me to create the raid 0 array and setup the boot, WinMRE, and EFI partitions as needed.

Sadly, while the bios sees the two Samsung drives and shows raid active, it does not show the new volumes as a drive option during Windows install step.

I am going over everything carefully to see what I missed, if anything.

This would have been much easier if Acer just permitted access to the creation of raid arrays in the bios like other manufacturers.

Final report soon.

I hope.

IronFly

About outdated CLI, obvious, that link was just an example to the ability of creating a RAID array even with locked BIOS.

About windows 10 not finding the RAID array, be sure to use the latest release and sometimes you will need to use the "famous" F7 key option to load RAID drivers, if any available.

Espionage724

Mweingar said:

It turns out the iRST CLI is several versions out of date (years) and not an option.

I have created a Windows boot usb and set it up to include the latest Windows version of the RST setup app along with some other tools. Booting to this with the Samsung M.2’s installed allowed me to create the raid 0 array and setup the boot, WinMRE, and EFI partitions as needed.

Sadly, while the bios sees the two Samsung drives and shows raid active, it does not show the new volumes as a drive option during Windows install step.

I am going over everything carefully to see what I missed, if anything.

This would have been much easier if Acer just permitted access to the creation of raid arrays in the bios like other manufacturers.

Final report soon.

I hope.

Are you sure the old RST CLI won't work?

I had a Predator 17 and was in a similar situation (no BIOS option for RST and wanted to combine the 2 SSDs that came with the laptop in RAID0).

I loaded up a Windows 10 install USB, got to the part where it showed the disk drives, and loaded the 13.2 RAID driver (sometimes this would fail for some reason). At that point, I went to Command Prompt (Shift + F10), and used RST CLI to create the array. Once done, I closed Command Prompt, refreshed the didk drives window, and the RAID0 set-up was shown.

Once Windows was installed, I then went and updated the RST driver to 15.2 (it can be updated after you create the array).

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