unable to see my m.2 drive

To bring others up to speed, I asked Pierre to post here from now on.  I believe this will be resolved now though as of last comments from 

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/114598

He is using WinPE, but needs to be building with Win10 ADK as earlier versions of ADK don't have this driver be default.  As of Acronis 2016 v6559, WinPE is not necessary for PCIE NVME hard drives - driver support is native in the default linux Acronis bootable recovery media now too. 

Hello

im rebuilding my media usb with the windows 10 adk

i will let you know

Thanks

hello

im able to create the acrinis winpe media but it seems i cannot do it for the universal restore do you know why ? option grey out

Thanks

hello i just did the test with the media i create and i still not able to see the drive

Thanks

Pierre,

Have you tried using the standard Linux based Recovery Media instead of the WinPE version?  I use that and it works fine, no problem seeing my M.2 drives.

yeah i re do the acronis media and still not seeing the drive

Thanks

Pierre, get the WinPE from Microsoft directly - remove any ADK you have insalled first then download and install Microsoft ADK for WinPE  10 (6.0)

As for universal restore, you have to download the add-on from your online account and install it separately - the current version of it is still v6027.  Once installed, you should be able to search for "run universal restore media builder"

It is launched from C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Acronis\Run Universal Restore Media Builder.lnk which actually runs from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\UniversalRestore\UniversalRestore.exe"

If you're using the default linux media v6571, it should see the drive.  Could you post screenshots (cellphone pics) of the steps you're taking, staritng with a REBOOT (not shutdown and start), then your F12 one-time boot menu and what options you have there and what you're pressing.  If you are using UEFI USB boot, you should get a black menu with white letters and select the option to boot Acronis.  Then show us what drives are available for backup.  Whatever's listed there should also be available for recovery.  I know that the 5510 is supported, I have them, but don't have access to one as they are all deployed to end-users.  There isn't a Dell yet that I haven't been able to work with WinPE and/or the default Linux bootable recovery media. 

I have the same issue when trying to create a partition on a M.2 PCIe SSD with a MBR partition.  I don't see the entire drive from Disk Director 12.  The partition was generated using Windows 10 DVD after deleting its origianl UEFI partition.  The boot option on the BIOS program is set to legacy (no UEFI).  Any suggestions will be appreciated.  Thanks.

hello

i have only the adk 1511 i create the media (usb stick) i press f12 and do the rest i chosse the image and then when im at the point to chosse the destination i see only my usb stick

i will post pictures.

hello

here is the step

at the end when i choose the destination i cannot see the m.2 drive i try with linux base usb and winpe same thing

Thanks

Pierre - what is the SATA mode in the bios set as (AHCI, RAID, or something else)?  If set to RAID, try setting to AHCI - dell sometimes set to RAID-ON by default, but there is no advantage to doing so with a one drive boot drive setup.  Perhaps that is the difference in out setups as we always use AHCI by default.  For those that require RAID, I do use WinPE and inject the Dell driver pack into the PE for compatibility with all Dell systems.  Please see this post for more instructions on how to do that:

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/112372#comment-373265

hello  sata operation was set to Raid On  i will set it to ahci and try again

Thanks

ps: my screenshot are good ?

Regards

hello

just to let you know i have put AHCI and i can see the drive now so thabnks to all !!!

Regards

Pierre,

Thanks for posting back your outcome.  Your reply will certainly help other users and will allow the MVP community here to be better equiped to handle troubleshooting with these Dell machines.  It makes no sense to me why Dell manufacturing would set up a single OS drive system in RAID mode when it is totally unnessary.  In fact, with your system setup in RAID mode that means that your machine performance will take a hit from the simple fact that it must allocate the overhead resources necessary to run the machine in RAID.  On a laptop that could be noticeable when running certain applications. It only shows that since Intel has written a driver supporting both RAID and ACHI into a single driver this manufacturers production has taken the easy step for the assembly line to set all machines up as RAID with no consideration of the end user needs or machine specific requirements.  As an ex system builder I find such actions deplorable

Enough rant!  Glad you got things squared away.

Pierre, can you post some steps on how you accomplished this change? I have changed BIOS from RAID to AHCI and always get a BSOD stop error 7b. I've found online posts saying enable services in registry like atapi, msahci, iastorv, etc; have done all that, but every time I boot to BIOS and change from RAID to AHCI I get a BSOD and cannot get Windows to boot. I'm using Windows 7 not 10, but hoping someone has a "gotcha" that I've missed somehow in making this change and trying to get Acronis to do the backup.

Thanks!

PTI Vendors,

If using Windows 10, you can just find the SATA Mode in the bios and switch from RAID to AHCI.  Windows 10 seems to be able to handle this without any changes (assuming you don't actually have any disks raided together - if you do, RAID is the only option unless you break the RAID in the bios first).

Again, assuming you don't have an actual RAID of multiple disks, then, in Windows 8.1 - Windows 7, you must first prepare the OS by changing some registry keys and installing the necessary AHCI drivers.  This can be easily accomplished with this published Microsoft Fixit Tool.  

Download the tool.  Run the tool by right clicking and "run as adminisrtator (even if logged in as admin already). Power off.  Go into the bios and switch the SATA mode from RAID to AHCI and save the change.  Boot up the OS (should boot up). Once booted, you'll most likely get a note to restart the system to complete the changes.  Allow the system to reboot to do this and you're done. 

I have had no issues doing this on several occassions. However, to be on the safe side, you may want to take a full disk image as a precaution - never hurts to be safe than sorry.

Windows 7 does not handle this change well as does Windows 10.  The Atapi miniport must be loaded at boot as well as the Msahci driver.

Check the registry entries as outlined below and adjust if necessary:

Changing from RAID to AHCI, you need the following steps. Msahci driver requires Atapi.sys miniport to be loaded during boot as well. So you need to change the Start value to 0 for both of the following entries in your registry. You can use regedit.exe utility. 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi

Bobbo,

Thanks for the response; I appreciate your time and efforts! There are definitely lots of people online saying they make the registry changes, change the bios, and boot up fine. Unfortunately I find myself one of the unlucky ones where that process hasn't worked yet. Hoping I am just missing something somewhere.

I looked at that MS article, and what the fix it myself section details - registry changes to enable Msahci and IastorV services (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\). I have already edited the registry for 7 total services noted on different forums inlcuding this one (Acronis) to set start value from 3 to 0: atapi, msahci, iastorv, amdsata, nvstor, nvraid, and pciide. The laptop always BSOD on reboot - it shows "Windows Starting" with the 4 colored flying flags, and then BSOD with 7b error. On setting bios back to RAID, I get back into Windows just fine. I've even tried going into Safe Mode after changing the Bios to AHCI as some have suggested to let Windows start up and see the change and install the drivers. Even Safe Mode gets the BSOD and won't boot.

My setup is Win 7 Pro, 512GB SSD M.2 PCIe main/C drive, 2tb normal spinning HDD as D/Data drive.

Have you done a complete shutdown of the PC after making the changes and then restarted the PC?  If not you should do so.

Your error is that of the Msachi driver not loading at startup.  Changes to registry settings often require a restart of the machine to become effective.  A reboot in Windows 7 is not the same as a shutdown/restart.

Enchantech,

Thanks for your suggestion; definitely willing to try anything to get this change made. From inside windows, made sure the registry settings were still set to 0 as described, and then did a full "shutdown". Boot up from shutdown (aka cold boot) back into windows just to make sure windows came up and had a chance to load the driver as you said. Again, full "shutdown". Then on power up went into bios and made the change from RAID to AHCI, save & exit (which restarts laptop), and I get same BSOD still.

Hmmm, I haven't run into this issue where the change did not take effect yet, but I have run the fixit tool and let it do the changes on its own.  Have you tried running it instead - just to see if it makes any difference (probably not, but worth a shot).

If you can grab a cell phone pic of the full BSOD error it may show something else we're missing.  You might also then try to run bluescreenview back in windows to see if it sheds more light on the BSOD error as well.  Probably is related to the controller change, but it might provide some additional details. 

What driver are you running when the machine is in RAID mode?  Look in Device Manager at the Stoage Controller, expand the view, hover over the entry exposed, right click, choose properties, click driver tab, collect the details and post here.

Driver in Raid mode shows:

Title: "Intel Chipset SATA RAID Controller"
Properties: Intel Corporation, 11/7/2015, Version: 14.8.1.1043
Driver Details: c:\windows\system32\DRIVERS\iaStorA.sys & iaStorF.sys

As to the BSOD, I can try the tool - can't hurt. The BSOD itself says (can't take a pic right now):
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run chkdsk /f to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xFFFFF880009A97E8, 0XFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0X0000000000000000, 0X0000000000000000

Going to try booting to linux media with AHCI enabled to see if I can see the drive and do a backup, then put it back to RAID mode to keep windows working, at least as a stop gap to get this project going.

Thanks again to both of you!

PTI,

Question: The OP of this thread was having issue with the bootable recovery media.  Your questions are more pointed at booting an installed Win 7 OS, these are two completely different operations.  Can you please describe what it is you are trying to do, boot your machine from recovery media or boot your machine into Windows using a different SATA mode?

If your intent is to boot to recovery media then our discussion is clearly headed in the wrong direction.  If your intent is to boot your installed Windows into a different SATA mode can you tell me why you wish to do so?

It's both actually. The original poster could not see his M.2 SSD drive in the linux bootable media because his hard drive was set to SATA mode in BIOS. He was able to get his BIOS setting changed and see it in bootable media and get back into Windows, or it sounded so. In the research I've seen here and other online places this is the case in Win 10.

For me, in my testing yesterday on a Win 7 Dell 7510 laptop, I was able to get the BIOS to AHCI and successfully use the Acronis boot media to see the SSD and back it up. I was also able to then test restoring that image back to the drive successfully also.  However, I cannot leave it in that mode or the laptop isn't usable - Windows won't boot. Others (Bobbo above and others on this forum) seem to be able to make this change in Dell BIOS and be able to boot back into Windows fine, but so far I cannot.

I appreciate both of your help on this. Mgmt has said too much time spent on it now that I can at least backup and restore with the BIOS setting change, and then when done change back to RAID type and successfully get back into Windows. It's a LONG convoluted process, which I'm documenting so I can remember it in emergency situations, but it is what it is as this point.  I agree with Bobbo that it's too bad that Dell defaults all theirs to RAID version when it's single drive and no RAID is needed. Have to move on until Acronis, Dell, and/or Windows makes this easier.

Thanks again for the help. Hopefully if anyone else finds this thread, the additional info will help - you can do the Acronis backups/restores via AHCI mode, just might have to put it back to RAID to use the device if you can't get Windows to change the start up/services.

PTI,

Glad you got this sorted for you.  Problem is a bit convoluted at present so I will attempt to explain here briefly.

The UEFI bios versions capable of supporting boot OS from these M.2 PCIe drives at present use Intel RST drivers.  The drivers from Intel since 2012 have a combined RAID/AHCI drivers in an all in one package.  I cannot confirm this at present but NVMe support is also present in this combined driver set since versions 11 of the driver set but that support is dependent on RAID Mode being enabled at the Power On Self Test level.  Reason being that ACHI and NVMe are two distinctly different modes of operation.  AHCI by design being firmly based on the SATA interface introduces performance and latency problems to PCIe connected devices.  NVMe is a new standard that addresses these issues with enhanced parallelism of the driver for use on the PCIe interface.  RAID drivers by design can take advantage of NVMe were AHCI cannot due to design.  So it is obvious then why Dell has chosen to setup new machines in this fashion.  What is distrubing to me is that thsy are implementing this on laptops that are not equipped with PCIe drives simply because the AHCI drivers necessary for these devices to work are included in the Intel driver packages.  As example, Bobbo's reference is that of machines not equipped with PCIe drives yet have the SATA mode enabled as RAID, at least that is to the best of my understanding of this.

I am attaching a WIKI article that gives a good overview of all of this and is worth the read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express

I understand your pain here is this.  I recommend however that your current handling of the issue must continue.  Backup of your machine(s) can be done from within the Windows installed True Image interface.   Restore can and should only be done from the bootable recovery media.  In order to take full advantage of the PCIe drives you must have RAID enabled in the bios so that NVMe support is available for the device.  So changing bios settings as you have found is the only workaround available at present.

The true is not always so that TI recognizes the drives on the M.2 port only in the ACPI, only starting
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver Version 15.2.0.1020 Release date 2017-01-17
And it can not be easily uninstalled and remains in the BIOS.

Das wahr nicht immer so dass TI die Laufwerke am M.2 Port nur im ACPI erkennt, erst ab
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver Version 15.2.0.1020 Erscheinungsdatum 2017-01-17
und er lässt sich nicht einfach deinstallieren und bleibt im BIOS.