Windows: Cannot activate Intels Smart Response Technology

Hi,

a customer of mine has bought a new PC (Fujitsu Esprimo P956 E94+) with an 256GB SSD and 5TB Harddisk and he wants to use the SSD as accelerater (Write/Read cache) for the 5TB Disk.

Newer Intel Chipsets support such a configuration. It is called Smart Response Technology.

I installed Windows 10 Professional and the Intel RST Driver and Software (Version 14.8.0.1042 , latest version at 07.04.2016)

A requierment is that in the System BIOS the mode of the SATA Controller must switch from “AHCI”Ā  to “RAID”.

The disklayout which I used is

  • Disklayout GPT (UEFI Boot) to use the whole Disk for C:
  • EFI Partition, MSR Partition (both created automatically by Windows Setup)
  • Add the rest of the disk as one large Partition, Windows Drive C:

After installing Windows I installed the Intel RST Software package but unfortunately after starting configurator the option to activate the acceleration is not available šŸ™ .

A lot of testing later I found out that the problem is the disk layout. When the whole disk (one big partition C or two partition C: and D:) is used at installation time the ability to enable the acceleration does not appear in Intel RST tool.

I just shrinked the last partition for 1MB by Windows Disk Manager, reinstalledĀ Intel RST Software aand the rebooted the Computer. From now on I’ve been able to enable the acceleration šŸ™‚

It seems there is a bug in the installer of the RST Package when the whole disk is used during Windows setup so that the Smart response technique isn’t enabled.

Michael

 

 

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