TR Forums

Hi all,

Needed a bit of an advice about two situations I'm having on my PC, current specs on sig.

So my 2 Corsair SSDs work normally under Windows 10 (one has the OS and the other is a Steam library) but I can't seem to find them on the BIOS. Since I wanted to go back to my old Raid-0 setup with both of them, I need the to appear on the BIOS so I can CTRL+I and manage the RAID setup. Changing from AHCI to RAID on the BIOS isn't doing anything it seems. Any idea how to fix this?

Second point, I own a Windows 8 original copy and I upgraded to Windows 10. If I want to create a clean installation of the OS on this computer (I've made a usb stick with Windows 10 from Microsoft site), will the serial key be the same from my 8 original copy?

Thanks in advance.

Disks not showing up in the BIOS could be:

1. They are plugged into controller ports that are disabled in the BIOS - some boards have extra ports that aren't part of the main chipset/PCH. Motherboard manual will tell you which ports belong to which controller.
2. There is boot info on the disk that the BIOS can't handle - put them in an external caddy/bay on a machine that can see them and use diskpart's clean command to fully wipe them and their partition info.
3. The cables aren't seated correctly.

In my experience, it's almost always option 2.

As for Windows 10, yes. Use the Windows 8 serial key to install. It will activate as long as you haven't changed the CPU/Motherboard combo.

Except that his OS is currently on one of them. If BIOS didn't see them the system would not boot.

As just brew it says, I can't see them on the BIOS but they are both working fine under Win 10. So in case 2 happening as Chrispy_ mentions can I assume it would be easier just to wipe out all the drives, and if so, what is the easiest way to do this?

Thank you.

Can you confirm which ports the drives are plugged into? Assuming the system in your signature is the one we're talking about, the P8Z77-V has a SATA controller from ASMedia onboard. It's quite likely that the BIOS won't see drives plugged into those ports. So it could just be that everything is working normally.

If you have previously upgraded that PC to Windows 10 in the past, there won't be a key that you need for reinstallation - the motherboard should be registered with Microsoft's activation service and just authenticate on its own. During installation select "I don't have a product key" and push on through. After you get online it should activate.

derFunkenstein I can confirm both SSDs are connected to the main 6Gb Sata III ports. I have the ASMedia ports empty.

Is there a separate RAID BIOS page?

I don't find any separate RAID page. I remember when I had the RAID setup some years ago on this same machine I had to press CRTL+I a little after boot to show up the RAID config tool. From what I read the fact that the menu for the Intel RAID tool isn't showing up after boot it's because the BIOS isn't detecting the SSDs.

I took this screenshot from a review of the same board as mine, this is not an actual screenshot of my pc:

http://prntscr.com/i1plod

That's where the SSDs should be appearing I believe... It only shows my 1TB drive though.

Try disabling any "fast boot" features. The RAID BIOS should come up if enabled regardless of whether or not it detects any disks attached but many fast booting options skip initialization of that part of the RAID BIOS.

Wako thank you for your input, I'll try it tonight!