Replacing hdd in HP Envy Sleekbook with ssd - Not being recognized..

[cthomas1489]

So I recently purchased an HP Envy Sleekbook (the prebuilt one, not CTO because it took too long and I had a better deal with this one). It comes stock with a 500gb hdd and 32 ssd for intel rapid start tech.

Here's the link:
http/shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/B5T04UA?HP-ENVY-Ultrabook-4-1030us

Anyway, I went ahead and took out the mechanical drive and put in the ssd and booted up into windows 7 installation from usb (no optical drive). It only recognized the 32gb rapid smart drive and not my main ssd when it came time to partition the drives. Before this, it booted into a rapid start raid configuration utility and I disabled all the raid between the two drives. I've tried booting into the installation without the 32gb ssd plugged in as well and still nothing. I don't think the new ssd drive came DOA and am wondering if maybe theres a driver I need or something..? I'm just not very familiar with this intel rapid start stuff but the only main drive it's been able to read is the stock hard drive that came with it.

 

[cthomas1489]

I know for sure now the drive isn't dead because I put it in another computer and it was recognized fine and worked perfectly. I can't figure out how to get this laptop to recognize it though.

 

[danno505]

So I recently purchased an HP Envy Sleekbook (the prebuilt one, not CTO because it took too long and I had a better deal with this one). It comes stock with a 500gb hdd and 32 ssd for intel rapid start tech.

Here's the link:
http/shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/B5T04UA?HP-ENVY-Ultrabook-4-1030us

Anyway, I went ahead and took out the mechanical drive and put in the ssd and booted up into windows 7 installation from usb (no optical drive). It only recognized the 32gb rapid smart drive and not my main ssd when it came time to partition the drives. Before this, it booted into a rapid start raid configuration utility and I disabled all the raid between the two drives. I've tried booting into the installation without the 32gb ssd plugged in as well and still nothing. I don't think the new ssd drive came DOA and am wondering if maybe theres a driver I need or something..? I'm just not very familiar with this intel rapid start stuff but the only main drive it's been able to read is the stock hard drive that came with it.

from notebookreview.com:

--------------REFORMAT GUIDE-----------------

I was able to reformat both the HDD and the included 32GB mSATA SSD cache, installing Windows 7 Ult x64 OS onto the 32GB mSATA SSD and using that as the boot drive instead of the slower 5400rpm 500GB HDD, which is now a slave drive.

1) Disassemble the laptop and remove the mSATA SSD.

2) Leave the laptop disassembled and boot it up. You will be greeted with an Intel Matrix RAID configuration screen. Delete the RAID setup on the 500GB HDD and unbind it from the SSD cache. Finish and turn off the laptop.

3) Plug the mSATA SSD back onto the mobo and boot up the computer again. You will be greeted by the same Intel Matrix RAID configuration screen. Now, delete the RAID setup on the mSATA SSD. Finish and turn off the laptop.

4) Boot up the laptop with a Windows OS installation disc inside a connected external USB DVD drive. Hit ESC and select boot priority. Boot from DVD Drive and follow steps to delete partitions and reformat the SSD and HDD drives.

 

[jfont]

I have been looking into buying the Envy 17 3000. I was going to buy it with the cheapest HDD and then buy SSD to use as the primary drive. Having seen several forums on the issue of the envy not recognizing the SSD so I am wondering if this is the solution to that problem. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[gcb]

i'm confused. it's about windows? or is it the BIOS? ...i will bet it's some intel crap in the bios.


mine will be delievered in a week or so and i plan to leave the original HD with windows8 and use linux on a SSD that I will swap in (and swap back the old HDD in case i need some hardware not yet suported by linux)

will this be hell?

or will it be pretty straight forward to switch the HD/SSD back and forth if i follow the steps above?

 

[mike_coreit]

@danno505 I have removed the mSATA SSD but now the Intel Matrix screen does not appear. Is there any way to get it back?