Question Intel Rapid Storage Technology - Windows 10 INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE

[valoryea]

Just now I was fiddling around with my ASUS H97-PLUS BIOS, and enabled Intel Rapid Storage Technology to see what kind of effect it will have on Windows storage I/O performance. The BIOS noted the change from AHCI to RAID..

After setting boot order back to my system drive (Samsung 840 EVO), Windows logo seemed to load up just fine, but spins for much longer than expected. And then, smack comes in a BSOD about INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE. There's nothing I could do to get pass that except to disabled Intel RST again. I got into a shock situation when the Windows logo loaded again but indicated it was going to repair mode, of which it failed to fix the problem and left me unable to boot and use my system. Fortunately, after a few tries of different options I set it to continue loading Windows and somehow that did the trick and thankfully, I'm back in and operational.

Now I'm left wondering if there's anything extra I can do to get Windows to "accept" the system boot drive as it is with Intel RST? Or, even if there is a way, the benefits of RST are not significant enough to be worth the hassle?

 

[Colif]

IRST has been known to help speed up SSD or at least, I have seen people running it with just 1 ssd. I don't bother myself, ssd fast enough already compared to a hdd

IRST in bios likely just for RAID, I think you can run the software in windows without changing the settings in bios

its possible that swapping from ahci to raid also set the boot method to either GPT or MBR, and that could have led to inaccessible boot device if it was trying to boot a drive that was formatted the other way.

 

[valoryea]

My system boot drive is an SSD (Samsung 840 EVO), plus another secondary drive for more programs (Intel SSDSC2CW240A). With the exception of another mSATA SSD connected via USB, the rest are hard disks (multiple internal and external).

So the IRST feature in the BIOS isn't the same as Intel's broadly advertised software package (which I don't have installed on this computer)? Well it certainly does feel like it; the BIOS mentions the change from AHCI -> RAID, which suggests it's attempting to set my storage devices into a RAID configuration.

I suppose I can blissfully ignore the BIOS setting as there's no benefit to be gained.

 

[Colif]

I don't think the software can alter bios settings, windows can't even do that when it installs itself. Its likely it was a software raid and changes windows to RAID without the motherboard being involved. They probably do same things, one is just built into hardware.

IRST used to be used in older laptops to use an SSD to store files most commonly used to make a HDD seem faster as a boot device, but SSD are fast enough now that RAID doesn't improve their speed. SSD outgrew the need for 2 drives.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/rapid-storage-technology.html