Question Old RAID 0 SSDs not showing up in BIOS, Diskpart or Disk Management ?

[Falkara]

I had an Acer predator 17 laptop, Predator G9-793, that came with 2 128 gb SSDs in RAID 0 configuration. I wanted to expand the storage, so I made an image of the disk, took both out and replaced them with a 2 tb SSD. I built a new pc to be my main pc and took the 2 tb SSD out and put it in the new one. I tried to put the 2 128 gb SSDs back in the laptop, but it would not boot to Windows. I then tried to reinstall Windows using a usb drive and the SSDs showed up as a 256 gb drive (the raid drive I'm assuming) but when I tried the install the process got stuck midway. When I tried to install with only one of the SSDs present, it didn't show up in the windows installer.

I tried putting the SSDs in my new pc to see if I could wipe the drives or check their status, but they don't show up in bios, diskpart, or disk management. When I put one of the drives in my laptop, it showed up in bios and diskpart. My next plan was to attempt to format the drives in diskpart on the laptop, but I figured I would try to get some advice before I possibly screwed things up further. I don't care about the data on the drives, I already have backups of it, but I'm not sure why they aren't working and don't want to make them unusable.

 

[Misgar]

Are the 128GB SSDs 2.5in SATA or M.2 form factor? If they're M.2 it's possible the interface in the laptop is SATA but in the desktop it's NVMe. Hence the drives won't be recognised in the desktop.

The installation probably failed on the 256GB combined drive because you didn't have the correct driver on the Windows boot image for use with the RAID hardware in the laptop.

 

[Falkara]

It looks like the 128s are M.2 SATA and my desktop mobo doesn't support that, so that probably is the issue there.

I will try adding the drivers to the usb boot disk and loading them before installing- I grabbed this IRST driver and extracted it

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) User Interface and Driver

The Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) Driver (16.8.5.1014.5 ) supports the configuration and enabling of system acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory and maintenance of RAID 0/1/5/10.

www.intel.com

which I believe is the RAID tech in use, as well as other drivers that seem relevant from the product page

Support | Acer United Kingdom

Find service & support for your Acer products, search for BIOS updates, manuals, drivers and patches.

www.acer.com

 

[Falkara]

So I think the issue is fixed. My initial attempt to extract the IRST driver with winrar did not work, and I had to start up the exe then copy the files from the temp folder created before closing it. Using the driver files copied this way I was able to load them before the windows install, and that let the install work. Windows appears to be up and running fine.

 

[Misgar]

Good to hear you're and running again.