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I have an old Dell XPS420 with an Intel RAID controller on the MB. For years I’ve had RAID 1 enabled on a 2x1TB array set up as two volumes: A 300GB volume which has Windows 7 installed on it and the remainder as a “data” volume.

Now I’d like to move the 300GB volume over to a new Crucial MX100 256GB SSD I just installed. I have successfully installed the SSD and imaged the boot volume over to it using Acronis True Image 2014 (which is included with Crucial’s SSD), but now the SSD won’t boot. When the system attempts to boot from it, the whole system hard-restarts all the way back to the BIOS power-up screen. I can still boot from the old volume so I haven’t lost anything yet, but I’m wary of messing with any more settings for fear I'’ll wipe out my existing drives.

I suspect the RAID controller (Intel’s ICH9) and the configuration of the boot volume as a RAID volume is keeping the new standalone SSD from booting correctly, but I’m definitely out of my area here. Can anybody suggest what to try next? I’d rather not reinstall Windows 7 and five years worth of apps/data if I can avoid it.

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  • I don't see anywhere where you mention running Startup Repair. This would be the first thing to try...
    – Jason
    Feb 16, 2015 at 0:33
  • Thanks, I've never once in 10 years needed a "System Repair Disc", which is why I guess I didn't know about it. First time for everything, I suppose. Feb 16, 2015 at 0:42
  • @user3120173 You don't need a system repair disc. By default, Windows 7 has a recovery partition, which you can access by hitting the F8 key before Windows starts.
    – Jason
    Feb 16, 2015 at 5:44

1 Answer 1

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In hopes that it can help someone else, here is the answer that I found.

The Dell XPS-420 (and a lot of other Dell systems) use the Intel ICH9R RAID/SATA controller. The latest version of the driver that Dell provides is 7.8, which will not correctly support SSDs. This has to do with an obscure issue regarding reported physical disk sector size versus logical disk sector size, which breaks some Windows services. SSDs apparently report information differently than old-style hard disks. More information is available here and here, if you want.

The answer to this problem, for suffering Dell computer owners, is to go directly to Intel's site and download a later version of the driver for this ICH9R chipset. The version I used, which cured my SSD problem, was version 10.8.1003 which is available here:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=20768

The driver has been renamed from the "Dell" version name of Intel Matrix Storage Manager to the "current" name of AHCI: Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Intel Desktop Boards, but it does appear to be the correct driver. Installing it appears to have cured all my SSD problems. I didn't have to revert back to the old HD, or reinstall my OS.

Note: You will have to download and manually install the driver, it won't be automatically detected or anything.

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