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Message started by Dick on Sep 9th, 2012 at 11:40am

Title: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Dick on Sep 9th, 2012 at 11:40am
Ghost32 11.5.1 (Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5.1) is incompatible with an SSD accelerated disk in an Intel Rapid Storage Technology environment.  In order for Ghost32 running in a WinPE environment to see what is normally an accelerated OS drive, you must first turn acceleration off, then boot the system with the Ghost32 WinPE boot disk.  Once the image of the disk (the one acceleration has been turned off) has been created, a reboot of the computer and re-acceleration of the disk can be done.  To restore an image to a normally accelerated disk, acceleration must be turned off, the image restored to the disk, the system rebooted and acceleration turned back on.

Turning off acceleration can be done at boot with Ctrl-I and turn off acceleration from the Intel Rapid Storage Technology status screen, or from Windows 7 by running the Intel Rapid Storage Technology management program.  Acceleration can be turned back on only from within Windows 7 by running the Intel Rapid Storage Technology management software.

I have a Dell XPS 8500 with a 32 GB SSD configured in Intel Rapid Storage Technology as a Raid 0 disk and my OS partition residing on disk 0 accelerated.  The acceleration is noticeable, so use of the acceleration is warranted.  Finding this solution to back up disk 0 containing my OS partition was a must, and the above procedure works flawlessly.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 9th, 2012 at 3:32pm
@ Dick


Is this relevant to your thread?

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2012/04/13/dell-whitepaper-intel-responsiveness-technologies-setup-guide.aspx

Is your 32 GB SSD a separate drive or is it part of the HD as a cache?

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Dick on Sep 10th, 2012 at 8:25pm
The link to the Dell white paper is quite relevant to understanding how to accelerate and how to remove acceleration from a hard disk that has been configured as described in this white paper.

My SSD is an mSATA card installed on the motherboard.  Intel created this environment to allow caching of files from a hard disk on the SSD.  In most cases the drive containing the operating system is set to be accelerated and the files loaded at boot are cached on the SSD.

Anyone running a system using this Intel Smart Response Technology and wishing to back up their accelerated drive with Ghost, will have to follow the outlined steps in order to create an image or restore an image.

I failed to mention that running Ghost32 from within Windows 7 (possibly true for XP though not tested) when acceleration is turned on will result is spurious information reported about the accelerated drive (it will be reported as a Raid drive) and trying to create an image will fail because Ghost32/Window 7 cannot lock the file system and the program closes.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 10th, 2012 at 8:49pm
@ Dick

That is really great information.

I've seen a few threads in other forums where folks with mSATA and mSSD were having trouble backing up and restoring their systems. Your knowledge would have been most helpful.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 14th, 2012 at 5:07pm
@ Dick

A question. If you disable Acceleration does your mSATA card show as a partition in Disk Management? If so I assume an OS could be installed to the card instead of to the SATA HD.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Dick on Sep 15th, 2012 at 2:27pm
After disabling acceleration, I checked which drives show up in Disk Management both before and after rebooting.  The mSATA card does not show up.

If you have the maximum 256 GB mSATA card installed, the OS completely resides on the mSATA card.

Since my drive is only 32 GB, I only have limited caching of the OS files.

The mSATA card is specially managed by the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver installed before the OS is installed as described in the Dell White Paper accessed by the link you posted.  The motherboard, chip set and driver all work in concert to create this Intel Smart Response Technology.  Because of all this, the mSATA card will never be able to be used by the system other than for the options detailed in the Dell White Paper.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 15th, 2012 at 3:10pm
@ Dick

Thanks for the info. Is there a setting to make the mSATA card "available" so it can be used as a normal drive after Acceleration is turned off? I understand the drive isn't visible by just turning Acceleration off.

I've read that the ghost32.exe limitation doesn't apply to other imaging software. TeraByte's IFW and IFD can image and restore a system while it is in the Accelerated state.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 17th, 2012 at 3:43am
@ Dick

Page 4 in this pdf indicates how the mSATA card can be turned into a normal drive.

ftp://europe.asrock.com/manual/raid/Vision%20HT%20Series/IntelSmartResponse/English.pdf

A friend is planning to buy a Dell laptop in the near future. If it has a mSATA card he wants me to put the OS on the card. Not just Win7 but also WinXP. The latter is his favoured OS.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Dick on Sep 19th, 2012 at 6:01pm
@ Brian

I tried every way possible to manipulate this mSATA card once acceleration was turned off.  I am certain that because the card is configured with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver, nothing can be done with this other than use it for one of the methods described in the Dell white paper.

I have also read about other software working, but remain skeptical until some definitive reporting were done.

The Symantec tech support person I spoke with mentioned version 3 of the Ghost Solution Suite being worked on and some effort to make this version natively compatible with an accelerated disk operating within the Intel Rapid Storage Technology framework.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 19th, 2012 at 11:15pm
@ Dick

Thanks for the follow up. TeraByte Support will be testing it in the next few days. Tom Cole in the following thread has a Dell Vostro 3560 laptop.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=723

My mate is now looking at the Inspiron 17" laptop. It has two drive bays and no mSATA card so that should make things easier. We'll put a SSD in the spare drive bay.

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by Brian on Sep 20th, 2012 at 4:28pm
@ Dick

The workaround on page 4 of the above pdf doesn't work?

Title: Re: Windows 7, Intel Rapid Storage Technology w/ SSD WinPE Ghost 11.5.1
Post by ralph on Jan 1st, 2013 at 12:48pm
I have a Dell 7520 with Intel Rapid Storage Technology.  It has a 1T HDD and 32G SSD.  Like you, I was not able to get the Ghost WINPE boot disk(11.5.1.2266) to work, so I built a Linux one and it worked like a champ.  I could see both the SSD and internal HDD in addition to external USB drives and made a successful backup of the HDD to the external drive.  I’m new to RST and very scared of rendering the PC(since it’s my sisters) inoperable.

I have a couple of comments and questions.  I did NOT have to turn off acceleration for the Linux preOS boot disk to do the backup.  I would think that’s a good thing since backups normally done more times than restores and this would be less steps.


Question 1.  When I do this backup is it correct since I didn’t turn off the acceleration.

I next wanted to try a restore test and put a different internal HDD in the machine.  When I booted, before the BIOS, I got the Intel Menu and this is where I got nervous.  It’s asking me to reply D or R and there are 5 menu items (and Exit) and navigation and responses were cloudy to me.  At this point I put the original drive back in and gave the machine back to my sister since she had to return home.  I think I know where to turn the acceleration off in Windows but my test would be for a complete hard drive crash where I could not do that.

Question 2. Can you tell me the proper steps to take at boot time so I don’t cause any damage and can do a Ghost restore. 

Thanks for your help.

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