Aspire 5 A514-52 - BIOS SATA Optane mode missing- ONLY have "AHCI" or "Optane without RAID"???

I wrote to Acer support but no one has replied yet. The laptop is brand new-- just got it a few days ago. I installed a 2nd SSD with the included 2nd drive caddy ( the intention of installing Linux Mint onto the 2nd drive). In BIOS settings, I saw I had an old BIOS v.1.00 so thought it might be fixed going to the newest, which I did. But I'm left with the same "non-options" where Optane is concerned. I ONLY have "AHCI" or "Optane without RAID"

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/ci/8tla4qfg0i11.jpg

Does this unit need to be RMA'd? From everything I've found online about this, everyone else with this model family DO have the "use Optane" option, I don't.

System is the i3/8GB RAM/128GB Kingston NVMe w/Win 10.

(PS: tried the, "ctrl + s" to expand options-- still only have Optane w/o RAID or AHCI).

I also noticed that I had to set the supervisor password to access most of set-up, and that the factory-installed NVMe main drive cannot be PW protected?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/np/4zsrlq91a0p3.jpg

There seems to be a lot of issues with this laptop's BIOS. Is there anyone here who can speak to this problem?

Cheers

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brummyfan2

Hi,
You don't need Optane option as you are using M.2 SSDs, these models come with AHCI and Optane without RAID options only, "NVMe SSD doesn't support HDD password" also normal for most of the average laptops.

TracyFortune

Assuming this is correct, why is one chosen over the other? Does "Optane w/o RAID" mean, it has Optane but not supporting RAID? Is there a benefit between the two choices I DO have?

brummyfan2

Hi,
Optane is used as an accelerator for spinner HDD, if you are using a Optane module in M.2 slot and using the HDD, you can choose Optane option in BIOS, if you are going to use a M.2 SSD in M.2 slot, you can choose AHCI option in BIOS.
M.2 SATA/NVMe SSD is much faster than Optane+HDD IMHO but others may have different opinion than mine.

olesy

Hi, you can roll back the firmware version to an older one. To do this, download it from the site, run it (warning of an error, do not close). You climb into the Temp folder c: \ ... \ username \ AppData \ Local \ Temp \ there the unzipped folder with the firmware will appear, copy it to drive C. Now you can click on the program with OK error and it will disappear from the Temp folder.

Now we are working with the folder you copied to drive C, open it, look for the platform.ini file in it, look for the line Bios_Version_Check and Flag = 2, change it to Flag = 0, save and run the firmware, the firmware will ignore the version and install the old version, the item will return SATA Mode with a choice. Good luck.