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If I have a single SSD connected in RST mode (No RAID configured), is there a chance that I lose data in my main partition if I switch to AHCI?

I'm wanting to reinstall Windows 10 on my machine after I corrupted the system partition on my SSD. I also don't have access to the recovery partition.

What I'm wanting to do before reinstalling is to see the current state of the SSD and back up the existing Windows partition to an external drive by booting Ubuntu and transferring the files. If I go into the bios and switch the SATA mode from RST to AHCI, is there a chance that I might lose any data in the primary partition? Given that the recovery and system partitions aren't seemingly accessible anyway, I don't care about those.

Edit: For clarification, the machine doesn't boot into Windows 10 because the system partition is corrupted. I'm going to have to reinstall windows, I just want to make sure that I back up my main partition with all my data before I do so. I'm intending to install ubuntu to dual boot so that I can some other means to access to the ssd.

pingOfDoom
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    It's risky. The safest way is to set AHCI first, but it CAN be done afterwards with a registry hack (for Windows anyway). Make sure you have backups, and give it a go. Don't be surprised if you need to re-install Windows though. – spikey_richie May 21 '21 at 14:28
  • Not tested by myself: https://support.thinkcritical.com/kb/articles/switch-windows-10-from-raid-ide-to-ahci – Tom Yan May 21 '21 at 14:34
  • You won't lose data by switching the mode by the way. If you don't care about the "bootability" of the current Windows installation anymore, then you don't need to bother. By the way, better make sure at least an initramfs you can use for Ubuntu includes the ahci module. – Tom Yan May 21 '21 at 14:38
  • Does this help : Switch from Raid On to AHCI (and vice versa) on reboot via script. – harrymc May 21 '21 at 14:40
  • @spikey_richie i'm going to have reinstall windows anyway since it doesn't currently boot into windows. – pingOfDoom May 21 '21 at 15:40
  • @harrymc hmm a little? thanks for the reply. I hadn't considered whether I would need to switch back to rst after reinstalling windows and no longer need ubuntu. might leave ubuntu on the ssd in case weird stuff happens again... – pingOfDoom May 21 '21 at 15:44
  • @TomYan Thanks for the reply. So to confirm, when the sata mode is switched to ahci, that only affects the system partition and not the Windows one? I didn't quite understand how you meant about initramfs – pingOfDoom May 21 '21 at 15:48
  • @pingOfDoom Why would that require a reinstallation of Windows? Capture a WIM of the system partition, recreate the Boot, WinRE, and OS partitions, then apply the WIM. OS partition corruption can be fixed via Dism and Sfc - if issues persist after booting to Windows, perform a Repair Install by running setup.exe while booted to Windows. While you tagged Ubuntu, you didn't state anywhere you're dual-booting - if you are, repair the BCD store via Ubuntu, but if not, repair it from WinRE via BootRec. – JW0914 May 21 '21 at 16:01
  • @JW0914 lost access to recovery partition so i can't access dism and sfc, which is why i wanted to reinstall windows. – pingOfDoom May 21 '21 at 16:11
  • @pingOfDoom WinRE is WinPE [windows install usb] with WinPE OCs vital to recovery added. Did you look at the fixed link, as WinPE/WinRE is explicitly stated? – JW0914 May 21 '21 at 16:17
  • @JW0914 thank you for your reply and the detail in the answers you provided in the links. by boot partition do you refer to the system partition or the primary one that values are saved to? Also when running the dism and sfc commands to fix the os partition like the answer provided, I should be running them against the drive letter of the primary partition right? – pingOfDoom May 21 '21 at 21:45
  • @pingOfDoom the boot partition is the boot partition housing the boot files (it's ~100MB in size and for UEFI is the EFI partition). The commands are ran against the OS partition, which is mentioned as a comment under the commands. – JW0914 May 21 '21 at 23:00
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – pingOfDoom May 22 '21 at 18:51

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