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I bought an HP Envy Sleekbook 14 that has a 500 gb hybrid drive (24 gb ssd, ~470 gb hdd). The computer has Intel Rapid Storage Technology support, and it was working when I first booted it up. Yesterday I decided to install some Linux distributions, and while doing that I deleted the raid setup of the computer (I wanted to install Linux on the ssd only). I can't exactly remember what the raid setup was, but before I deleted it in the bios there were 3 items: ssd was divided into two (a ~4 gb portion and a ~16 gb portion; one called stripe, the other called recovery?), and hdd was used as one piece. To install Linux I turned off UEFI.

Now I want to reinstall Windows 8 and turn on RST, but I'm having trouble. I turned the UEFI back on. I initially tried creating a Raid0 volume using the ssd and the hhd, and installing Windows. The installation started as usual (I needed to provide Intel drivers to make it recognize the disk), but after the first restart the computer gave an error message about not finding an OS on the disk; so I couldn't even finish installing Windows. I went back to BIOS, deleted the raid volume and restarted the installation. I picked the hdd as target (ssd was listed separately) and everything went smoothly. After the OS installation, I installed the RST software to enable RST, but the software did not give me any options like that. Apparently I should see an "accelarate" option, which is definitely missing. I'm guessing that the software does not work until I create a raid volume with certain properties, but the only thing I can do in bios is create a simple raid0 volume that has a size of 40-something gb (two times the ssd size.)

I remember that, before I deleted the initial raid setup, there were options in the bios about writing/synchronizing the data on the ssd to the hhd and 'accelerating' which definitely sounded like RST-related options. I should somehow bring them back, but I don't know how. Is there anyone who can help me with it?

p.s. factory reset is not possible since all the disk contents were gone when I deleted the initial raid volume.

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  • a hybrid drive is not a RAID, it's a Core Storage or Logical Volume group. Try howtogeek.com/howto/36568/…
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 31, 2014 at 16:45
  • But why do I have an option in bios that lets me create a raid volume?
    – swylae
    Commented Dec 31, 2014 at 16:47
  • because you can create a RAID… but why would you want to? It would only be 24 or 48GB in size, depending on whether you set striped or mirrored. (& wouldn't be a hybrid drive… it would be a tiny RAID)
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 31, 2014 at 16:49
  • That's what I'm asking. When I first got the computer I went to "UEFI Device Configuration" menu in bios, which showed me the three items I mentioned above, and Intel RST was working. By the way, turns out it's not a hybrid drive, there is a separate ssd in it based on info on HP's webpage: Hard Drive - 500GB 5400RPM hard drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection, Solid-State Drive - Hard drive acceleration cache (24GB solid-state drive cache) with Intel Rapid Start Technology and Intel Smart Response Technology
    – swylae
    Commented Dec 31, 2014 at 16:54
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    @swylae Set the BIOS to RAID mode but don't create any RAID groups. Don't set up the SSD at all. Set up the hard drive normally (not as a RAID group). You can make the SSD an acceleration volume later from the RST software.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Dec 31, 2014 at 18:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is how I solved the problem. Some of the steps may be redundant.

  1. I made sure that the SSD to be used for acceleration was set up as an MBR disk.
  2. I made sure that the SSD did not have any partitions.
  3. I shrunk my OS partition to half its size.

After I did those I ran the Intel RST software again, and it showed me an "acceleration" option. I enabled it, and now it's working.

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