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Switch Windows 10 from RAID/IDE to AHCI

Support Team
2021-01-17
55 Comments
in Microsoft Windows

Some systems will have the Windows operating system installed using RAID drivers including the Intel Rapid Storage Technology. SSD drives typically perform better using AHCI drivers.  There is in fact a way to switch operation from either IDE / RAID to AHCI within Windows 10 without having to reinstall.  Here are the steps:

  1. Click the Start Button and type cmd
  2. Right-click the result and select Run as administrator
  3. Type this command and press ENTER: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal (ALT: bcdedit /set safeboot minimal)
  4. Restart the computer and enter BIOS Setup
  5. Change the SATA Operation mode to AHCI from either IDE or RAID
  6. Save changes and exit Setup and Windows will automatically boot to Safe Mode.
  7. Right-click the Windows Start Menu once more. Choose Command Prompt (Admin).
  8. Type this command and press ENTER: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot (ALT: bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot)
  9. Reboot once more and Windows will automatically start with AHCI drivers enabled.
  • Tags
  • AHCI
  • Intel Rapid Storage
  • RAID
  • Windows
  • Windows 10
  • Windows 7
  • Windows 8

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Comments (55)

Chris Tue, 13th Nov 2018 8:30am

Correction. There *must* be a space between bcdedit and the forward slash. There is no command called "bcdedit/set" (for good reason)

Good information and thank you - it worked nicely. :)

Waron Thu, 22nd Nov 2018 8:22am

this works, thanks

I used the ALT commands

Jeffrey Wed, 2nd Jan 2019 1:50pm

This approach worked on my Windows 10 machine - which should have been set up with AHCI in the first place since all of my drives are SSD. However one must know that it may take several reboots for your D: disk to re-appear and become stable. In the first reboot, my data appeared to have been lost. After swearing at the computer several times, I decided that perhaps a reboot would help the situation. Fortunately after 2 more reboots, the disk re-appeared and all of the data was intact.
Thank you for these steps to switch my computer from RAID to AHCI.

Grant Sun, 10th Feb 2019 9:33am

Added a Samsung 970 Evo (500GB) NVMe M.2 alongside the existing HDD in new Dell Inspiron 5570. Samsung software couldn't load the drivers because drives configured for RAID. I set AHCI in BIOS and W10 (home) wouldn't boot up. Returned to BIOS to RAID and rebooted successfully. Found this thread and tried it. Yes, it worked! It took a bit of work to manipulate the the drive letters afterwards but got there eventually. Thank you for the information.

Evan Thu, 7th Mar 2019 10:19am

I had a really odd experience attempting this on Windows 10, but I finally figured it out:
When I switched to AHCI and got to the safeboot menu, my keyboard wouldn't work. If I tried to get to the keyboard settings nothing happened. I was able to get to the Command Prompt terminal via the 'Windows Systems' tab in the Start Menu. Once I had opened the Command Prompt, I could type in it using the on-screen keboard (Start Menu -> Settings -> Ease of Access -> Keyboard (scroll down and it's on the left) -> On-Screen Keyboard). Then I typed bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot (there didn't seem to be a way to use curly brackets). Then I Rebooted, and found that I had left Safe Mode, and everything was back to normal :)

It's one hell of a work-around, but hopefully this helps somebody!

Vinícius Sun, 10th Mar 2019 9:41am

Thanks @Evan! The keyboard thing also happened to me, but using the virtual keyboard did the job. If you press the shift key you'll be able to use curly brackets!

Travis Hauch Fri, 12th Apr 2019 12:01pm

Thank you very much! I am running Server 2016 and didn't realize my Intel board was in IDE until I tried to run two SSD's in Raid0 and was only getting about 400MB/s. I switched to AHCI and was getting "Inaccessible boot device". I used the method described above and it's working now! 1100MB/s.

Franco DeIuliis Wed, 16th Oct 2019 11:39am

Worked perfectly on a Dell Inspiron 15 7586. Came pre-configured in RAID mode and updated to 970 EVO Plus without the ability to get the Magician to function.
As soon as I completed the operation which took about 3 minutes, everything worked perfectly with no glitches or issues

edwin Thu, 14th Nov 2019 6:24am

Saved my day. Alternative command is somewhat confusing. I used bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal and bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
Result is that W10 booted with sata settings set to AHCI, Happy!

Thanks for sharing!

Geoffers Fri, 29th Nov 2019 3:28pm

Saved my bacon!
I got my ageing (10yrs) Dell T5400 back into life using the full commands.

Very many thanks!

John Mon, 23rd Dec 2019 9:09am

Just performed the procedure on an old Dell D630 fitted with a Kingston SSD that didn't have AHCI enabled.
Went flawlessly and machine now seems to boot a little quicker and feels quicker in operation.

Many thanks!

waren Sat, 4th Jan 2020 2:45pm

This worked for me! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

At some point my intel RST drivers stopped, and I was unable to reinstall the drivers. I thought it was a windows 10 1903 build issue however my system was still on 1809. The problem was at the BIOS level. Some how either through a BIOS update or a dead battery the BIOS storage configuration changed from RAID to IDE.

Without RAID enabled in the BIOS the RST drivers will not install. Also be sure to select the correct driver for your chipset. The newest drivers are not fully backwards compatible!

However even if I manually installed the RST x64 drivers first and then changed the BIOS to RAID the system would not boot.

I opened windows disk management utility and confirmed that the RAID 1 array was broken. Both disks appeared in the drive list, with one showing a warning due to addressing conflict (oh no)

Steps
1) installed the newest intel RST x64 driver that supports the chipset
2) set safeboot per above
3) enabled RAID in BIOS (was IDE)
4) booted to safemode
5) removed safeboot per above
6) checked that intel RST is running YES!
7) verify RAID 1 array (no idea how long the array was broken)

run windows disc management tool and verify RAID now appears correctly as 1 drive

After this Through some update cycle windows stealthily replaced all of the chipset and storage drivers with generic MS drivers.

I hope this helps someone else

esamett Fri, 31st Jan 2020 12:14pm

to enter bios is a separate step. On my PC it is hitting "DEL" key during reboot.

Sat, 15th Feb 2020 10:39am

on cmd
C:\WINDOWS\system32>bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal (ALT: bcdedit /set safeboot minimal)
Invalid command line switch: /set
Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance.
The parameter is incorrect.

Bob Sun, 16th Feb 2020 7:07am

As previous comment.
on cmd
C:\WINDOWS\system32>bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal (ALT: bcdedit /set safeboot minimal)
Invalid command line switch: /set
Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance.
The parameter is incorrect.

Tonni Sat, 29th Feb 2020 9:37am

Awesome. This worked.

Gabriel Tue, 3rd Mar 2020 7:11am

After activating safe mode and changing the BIOS to AHCI, windows goes into automatic repair mode, could someone help me?

Rasiel Jimenez Sat, 14th Mar 2020 1:37pm

(ALT: bcdedit/set safeboot minimal). No space between bcdedit/set

Sun, 29th Mar 2020 12:24pm

Worked perfectly on a Dell XPS 13 9360 (i7, touchscreen, SSD). Stupid question: Why doesn't the WIndows automatic repair do this?

Davide Berghi Sat, 4th Apr 2020 7:54am

Hi everyone, I have the same problem as Vignesh NALLAMILLI. The safeboot is set correctly, in fact, I'm able to boot into the windows' safeboot mode. However, when I change the SATA operation to AHCI, the computer (Alienware m15 with two SSD drives) doesn't boot into the operating system and start a sort of Alienware self-diagnostic mode.
Can anyone help me out with this problem?

Tom Williams Wed, 8th Apr 2020 8:26pm

This article is a LIFE SAVER!!!!! I'm in the process of migrating a new Windows 10 installation from a 2TB HDD to a 1TB SSD. This is a new (refurbished) Acer desktop system that came with RST with Optane configured in the UEFI settings. So, I followed the steps to switch it to AHCI and Windows 10 now boots. I'm now off to re-clone the HDD to the SSD. :)

For those having problems running the bcdedit commands, the "ALT" commands are supplied as *alternate* commands to use. So, either run the bcedit command that appears *before* the parentheses or run the command INSIDE the parentheses, but not the commands as shown above.

For me, I ran these commands:

bcdedit /set safeboot minimal

(then I rebooted and switched to AHCI)

bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot

THANK YOU for writing such clear and accurate instructions!

Peace...

Alex K. Wed, 22nd Apr 2020 7:06am

Worked flawlessly, thank you!

Dillonharless Sun, 26th Apr 2020 1:25am

It's 2a.m. God bless you.

gamingpower Thu, 7th May 2020 9:31pm

@Tom williams thank you very much for better explaining this tuto !
because it did not work because of ALT in the tuto!
and i confirm : it woooooooooorks !!!!! :-D

I have an asus Z97-A motherboard and Intel rapid storage technology is automatically activated in my bios and it automatically activates RAID and i didn't want to.
I wanted AHCI. Every time i reselected AHCI, i had a blue screen crash !

Thanks to this great tuto i can finally! :) i did not believe it and yet it works perfect!
I will see if the file transfers are accelerated in writing with my SSD samsung 850 evo 250go :) because before in RAID i never exceeded 80mb/s for files of 20 - 100go approximately when my ssd can go much higher...

gamingpower Thu, 7th May 2020 9:48pm

I forgot to specify that i am under windows10 pro 64bits in 1909 and i am in UEFI only. thanks again ;)

Adrian G. Wed, 27th May 2020 1:23pm

This absolutely destroyed my PC. Be careful

Yap Eng Hok Thu, 25th Jun 2020 12:38am

Hi, this didn't only half-worked for me. Let me explain:

I have 2 drives installed, one a normal HDD and the other SSD. Both have Win 10 installed so it's dual boot.

While running the PC with SSD as boot drive, I was not able to enter Win 10 after changing the setting in BIOS to ACHI i.e. BSOD. I had to change it back to IDE in order to boot up via the SSD.

I then tried running the PC with my HDD as boot drive. Everything all the steps above went thru smoothly and when I checked in Device Mgr and BIOS setting, ACHI was enabled. So since Win 10 had the ACHI drivers installed, I returned to the BIOS to set my SSD to boot up. It went to BSOD again. So right now for me to use the SSD to boot up my BIOS setting has to be set at IDE.

For information, my SSD was installed with Win 10 in the normal way. The SSD was actually cloned from my HDD since prior to obtaining the SSD, I had upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10 whilst using the HDD. Could this have caused the issue I am facing?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thu, 25th Jun 2020 12:50am

Correction, it should be my SSD was NOT installed with Win 10 in the normal way.

Ingo Wed, 1st Jul 2020 5:11pm

I cloned a normal HD onto an SSD, so the setting was at ATA in the bios. Windows ran fine with ATA setting booting from the SSD. I booted normally into Win10, set the safemode, rebooted and changed the BIOS setting to AHCI and booted. Win10 booted into safe mode. In there changed the setting back to normal boot and now its running in AHCI mode.
Awesome! Thank you!

julio linarez Fri, 17th Jul 2020 7:39am

Este autor se merece una ceveza bien fria.

Thank you a lot.

Salman Fri, 24th Jul 2020 11:48am

Worked like a charm!
Shukria :)

Robert Thu, 13th Aug 2020 3:47pm

PERFECT! I was trying to install Linux Mint 20 on a brand new laptop that was running Intel RST by default. Linux couldn't install while RST was enabled, your command prompts and easy instructions in the BIOS made this a breeze. Thanks!

mehmet Sat, 22nd Aug 2020 9:20am

thank you so much

John Bengtson Tue, 25th Aug 2020 3:57pm

Worked perfectly (used the shorter ALT commands) on my 12-year-old system that, with SSD and a few other upgrades along the way, is still running fine.

thpar Sat, 29th Aug 2020 11:01am

I'm having the same problem as Davide Berghi here.
Alienware m15 r3 with two SSD's in RAID0 does not boot into Windows anymore after switching to AHCI. It goes into a diagnostics mode and fails to detect any bootable media.

Only after switching back to RAID in the BIOS, Windows boots into safe mode.

Is the issue here that we're using an actual RAID (so Windows data is striped over the two SSD's)? Or should AHCI be able to handle that anyway?

Robert Noonan Fri, 4th Sep 2020 5:14pm

I have been trying to dual boot a Dell 5593 laptop with Windows 10 and Linux. If I set disks to RAID, Linux won't load. If I set it to AHCI, Windows won't load. This cure has at least got me part of the way there. I can now boot Win10 in AHCI mode. Now all I have to do is get the machine to boot into the Linux memory stick and take it from there. Thanks to all of you guys who take the time and trouble to help out the rest of us. Give yourself a pay rise.

Drew Tue, 15th Sep 2020 1:27pm

Thank you - with your instructions I was able to install Ubuntu 20.04 on a new Dell XPS 17 9700

Sunita Wed, 23rd Sep 2020 10:12am

Hello, I bought a new Dell Laptop Inspiron 15 5000, windows 10 pre-installed. I want to install ubuntu 20.04 alongside windows 10. I am getting error "Turn off RST". How to safely resolve this issue?

Hasnain Sat, 26th Sep 2020 5:07am

Thank you for the help.
After Step 6 i.e once I reboot and enable AHCI, the windows boots fine but the delete command doesn’t work. Do I need to run the delete command aa well or its fine cuz I am confused now

Jens Sun, 4th Oct 2020 3:56am

I have a SSD with Windows 10 ans two mirrored HDD with data.
I want to switch from BIOS-RAID to hardware raid, to be able to install Linux one a seconf SSD.
After enabling safeboot, and switching to AHCI, I get prompt to enter a propper boot device.
So I think there hase to be done a little bit more, if Windows 10 has ben installed in RAID mode.

William Tue, 6th Oct 2020 2:52am

Thank you, this made my Ubuntu installation on my Dell Inspiron 5400 so easy, after i had almost broken my Windows lol
Perfect tutorial

James Sun, 11th Oct 2020 8:33pm

I used the alt and it worked completely fine, going from IDE to AHCI.

William Wed, 14th Oct 2020 6:23am

Not working for my Asus Vivobook with ssd.
The message displayed is:
"Invalid command line switch: /set
Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance.
The parameter is incorrect."

Please help!

William Wed, 14th Oct 2020 6:47am

Sorry for the previous comment.

It works perfectly!

me Thu, 22nd Oct 2020 5:17am

hi kids
/set parametr in bcdedit return error

i did it much simpler

- to enable F8 key (safe mode) use command
(In win 10 Build 1909 or leter)
bcdedit /set bootmenupolicy legacy

- in Windows control panel / system /device menager / remove the hdd drive with system and confirm reboot
- ater reboot go to BIOS setins and set the AHCI mode save setings and exit bios
- next reboot go to safe mode command prompt by F8 key
- in safe mode command run chkdsk /f and confirm ( i dont know if its nesesary but i did the step)
- reboot system by CTRL+ALT+DEL
- done
sorry for my language (i don't know english)

krishh Tue, 27th Oct 2020 10:36pm

This worked for me. While changing to AHCI it still shows the warning, but nothing get erased. All of my data and files are still intact. And I am able to see my SSD drive in Fedora 33 installation.

Thanks.

ShamB Tue, 3rd Nov 2020 9:22am

Worth noting that if you are changing this on a gaming machine, you need to go into your BIOS a second time after the tutorial steps.

This is to make sure you have changed from IDE to ACHI in all the overclocking profiles, because the profiles don't save just the overclockable properties, but all of the editable ones - including the IDE/AHCI switch, which will cause serious problems if you later switch between BIOS overclock profiles!

Also, its worth noting for older motherboards that are an update install to windows 10 from Windows 7/8 (and therefore stuck on IDE, which will be the most common reason this occurs at all), the hard drive controller is typically already stretched with IDE, and you won't get any real gains.

For example, when I changed from IDE to AHCI on an X58 board, the overall performance was largely the same. The controllers on these boards won't give you much more than 250-280MB/s, which you will already be reaching with IDE.

Federico Fri, 13th Nov 2020 5:55am

I do the first step and when i reboot my pc it ask me for a password but i try ti use pin that I usally use to unlock the laptop but it dosen’t work i try to reboot a secodnd time and black screen

Joseph Cepi Sat, 21st Nov 2020 7:51pm

So AWESOME!!! Thanks!
Had an "Oh Bugger!" moment when I realised that I had installed Windows 10 to a new SSD in IDE mode.
Saved the above instructions to a txt file on the desktop for copy and paste into cmd prompt purposes, and it all worked a treat. This saved me a heap of time not having to re-install all over again.
Many praises.

Steve Siu Sun, 22nd Nov 2020 11:25am

I'm having a problem applying this. I go to the command prompt, set it to boot to safe mode, restart, go to BIOS, switch to AHCI, save and exit. The computer restarts, but after the BIOS flash screen just goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor. Never proceeds from there.

I can restart, go back to BIOS and switch back to IDE, save and exit, and the system starts in safe mode and I can unapply the start to safe mode command. But how can I get past being stuck on a black screen with blinking cursor when I switch to AGCI?

Harry Thu, 3rd Dec 2020 3:28pm

You have to use the password that you used before you set the pin.

Harry Thu, 3rd Dec 2020 3:31pm

Thank you sooo much! This worked too well to be believed.

Miroslav Hristov Fri, 4th Dec 2020 5:27am

Hello, help needed...

Second part in safe mode

bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot (ALT: bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot)

Bring me error

The delete command specified is not valid

:(

Miroslav Hristov Fri, 4th Dec 2020 6:00am

P.s. done that.
Removed second part of command ALT
And everything finished perfect!

Thanks a lot for the livesaver trick!!!

Stephan Sun, 6th Dec 2020 5:46am

Hi, i have a big problem with my laptop with optane and a damaged windows.

Maybe you look here: https://answers.microsoft.com/de-de/windows/forum/windows_10-update/kein-boot-nach-upgrade-1909-auf-2h20-zwei-windows/0ed42c18-97f3-407d-b5e7-af2c5c3a0cb0?tm=1607170275167

Or here: https://m.facebook.com/groups/53367057696/permalink/10159335758652697/

The Links are german, maybe some of you experts speak german, but you can answer in english too.

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