mSATA notes

DANGER! NEVER disable the mSATA disk in the BIOS if the main disk has not been synchronized. Otherwise, the main disk will appear as damaged and will have to be completely re-installed...
IMPORTANT If you change the partitions with gparted, leave some empty space (4-8 Mb) at the end of the disk, otherwise you will not be able to re-activate the disk acceleration...

What is mSATA?

A mSATA disk is a small (e.g. 32 Gb) SSD disk that is installed on a machine in order to be used in combination with a regular (i.e. bigger) disk:

as a fast system disk

as a fast cache to accelerate the regular disk

Low level mSATA administration

It is possible to enter the low level interface by typing CTRL-I when the machine is booting. You will then be in the Intel (R) Rapid Storage Technology - Option ROM interface

Note: on HP machines, the use of CTRL-I at boot time must be enabled in the BIOS

Synchronizing the cache and the disk

Select Acceleration Options, then type 's' to synchronize the disk. The Status must be In Sync

Disabling the acceleration

Enabling the acceleration

mSATA administration in Windows

Everything is done in the Intel Rapid Storage Technology program

Start menu => All programs => Intel => Intel Rapid Storage Technology

Disabling the acceleration

You have to disable the acceleration before you use GPARTED!

Performance => Désactiver l'accélération

Enabling the acceleration

Performance => Configuration de l'accélération => Sélectionner un périphérique => Mode Amélioré (plus sûr) ou Mode Optimisé (plus rapide)

Misc. notes

In order to use the mSATA for cache/acceleration, the following setting has to be activated in the BIOS
(Dell) Settings => System Configuration => SATA Operation: RAID on

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