Help with updating restored VGN AR51SU

[pefaulk35]

Hi,

Laptop has returned from Sony repair (faulty hard drive replaced), but it is back to the orginal state when I bought it.

I remember spending 1/2 a day updating drivers and trying to get things to work. Is there an easy way round this now, or do I have to go through all this again?

P

[rich912]

Hi essexpete,

Unless you saved an image of the original drive with a utility such as Acronis True Image, the answer is no there is no easy way around this - you will have to spend some time to update the OS and Sony drivers.

Maybe time to investigate ATI ?

[pefaulk35]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your reply.

I would like to move away from RAID 0 and just have 2 standard hard drives. One with the operating system and the other a slave for storage. Are there some instructions somewhere on how to do this?

Pete

[rich912]

Hi essexpete,

I would like to move away from RAID 0 and just have 2 standard hard drives. One with the operating system and the other a slave for storage. Are there some instructions somewhere on how to do this?

As far as I am aware there is no option for this within the Raid configuration.

I really have no experience of this but a Google suggests that you will need to access the advanced BIOS settings (not sure that this is even accessible with most Vaio's) and look for your host controller.

It should be set to IDE mode instead of RAID mode. Also on the main menu you might see IDE configuration. Open that and make sure it is set to configure using Standard IDE mode. Hit F10 to save and exit.

Use the above info at your own risk and do some research before committing...

Best of luck

[Blencogo]

You may find Solution V00252 in the Vaio Knowledgebase useful.

Try Typing V00252 into the search here: -

http://support.vaio.sony.co.uk/knowledge/kb.asp?site=voe_en_GB_cons&kb_link=http://kb.sony-europe.co...

[micdonal]

I've done this a couple of times with my AR51SU.
As Blencogo says, that link may help, but I'm not sure it gives the full story.
I don't know whether I did it correctly, but I did the following.
Tapped F2 during startup and entered the Bios. Selected advanced (I think) and changed the default HIDE setting to SHOW then pressed F10 and then enter. The laptop reboots and the screen shown in Blencogo's link appears (not sure what it's called). Press ctrl and I quickly and the RAID settings appear. One of the options near the top of the screen is "delete raid" - this is what I pressed. As I have said, this may not be the correct way of doing it (probably NOT) because I had to restart from my RECOVERY DISC! If you haven't made at least 2 copies of this I suggest you do it next thing!
The recovery ran as normal and when the system was back up I ran all the updates - both MS and Vaio. That took about 10 hours! Some Vaio updates may need to run more than once.
When everything was back to normal I had 2 hard drives listed.
The recovery seems to have restored a perfectly normal backup partition on the C: drive. I haven't checked it as I have my earlier copies on disc, but it appears in Disk Management as healthy.

As a possible alternative you could try using the Matrix Control Utility - I'm sure I saw an option in there for changing the raid setup.
But first make those recovery discs.

Happy hunting!

[pefaulk35]

Many thanks for your replies.

It all looks a bit too complicated.

Looks like I'll have to stick with RAID 0 and make regular weekly backups in preparation for when it next fails.

It's a shame. I bought this laptop in the hope it would be reliable.

It would be great if they offer a range of system setups.

[micdonal]

Essexpete, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel!
I am experimenting at the moment with the Intel Matrix Storage Console.
I am running a non-raid setup at the moment but am returning to a raid 0. I have backed up both Vista and Windows 7 with Acronis True Image so if anything goes wrong I will still be ok.
I entered the Intel Matrix Storage Console and clicked on "set up a raid0" item and it states that files (systems) may be lost. I continued anyway (as I knew I could get everything back) and a screen then comes up saying that files are being migrated! Presumably that means the system is going to be restored as is, but in a raid 0 setup. The original screen states that the process may take 1 to 3 hours, but a pop up windows says it will take 6 hours + (maybe that's because I have 2 OSes to replace. I'll see how it goes and post back.

[micdonal]

OK it has run ok. It took about 4 hours but it did restore my Vista system to its current state - on half the drive's space - leaving the other half unallocated. This is probably because my second OS (Windows 7) occupied the other half of the drive.
So, all in all, if you have only one OS installed the Intel Matrix Storage Console seems to be able to change from non-raid to raid 0 without loss of OS or data. I would assume therefore that it can go from raid 0 to raid 1 or to non-raid without loss also.