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Intel 750 PCIe SSD with seperate RAID 10 on same rig

Hello community! Long-time reader with first post here. I am in the process of my first build and I have a storage question. My build specs are at the end of this post. I want to run my main programs/OS on the Intel 750 HHHL PCIe 400Gb and in the same machine run a RAID 10 setup with 4 WD Red 2 TB HHD's. How do I go about setting this up in BIOS? I originally planned to run a Samsung 840 Evo from my old machine with the RAID 10 setup. In that case, I was just going to enable raid and not include the 840 in the array. Because AHCI is a subset of RAID, I think that would have worked fine. Now that I am using an Intel 750 with NVMe I don't think that this plan will work. I hope that you guys can sort me out on this as I cannot find a clear answer on this anywhere. 

 

Build Specs on Tyler's "do pretty much anything X99 PC"

 

Motherboard: Asus Rampage V Extreme

CPU: Intel 5930K

RAM: 16G Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 2133Ghz (4x4)

CPU Cooler: Corsair H110 GT

GPU: Asus Strix 970 x2 in SLI

Storage: Intel 750 HHHL PCIe 400GB SSD, Samsung 840 Evo 500GB SSD, 4 2TB WD Red HHD

PSU: Corsair AX860

Optical: Asus BW-12B1ST Blu Ray Writer (I am old school like that lol)

Monitors: Asus VN248H-P triple monitors

Case: Corsair 760T

Accessories: ROG Front Base

Do not ask what the world needs.  Instead ask what makes you come alive, and go and do it.  Because what the world needs, is people who have come alive.

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Hello community! Long-time reader with first post here. I am in the process of my first build and I have a storage question. My build specs are at the end of this post. I want to run my main programs/OS on the Intel 750 HHHL PCIe 400Gb and in the same machine run a RAID 10 setup with 4 WD Red 2 TB HHD's. How do I go about setting this up in BIOS? I originally planned to run a Samsung 840 Evo from my old machine with the RAID 10 setup. In that case, I was just going to enable raid and not include the 840 in the array. Because AHCI is a subset of RAID, I think that would have worked fine. Now that I am using an Intel 750 with NVMe I don't think that this plan will work. I hope that you guys can sort me out on this as I cannot find a clear answer on this anywhere. 
 
Build Specs on Tyler's "do pretty much anything X99 PC"
 
Motherboard: Asus Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel 5930K
RAM: 16G Corsair Dominator Platinum @ 2133Ghz (4x4)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110 GT
GPU: Asus Strix 970 x2 in SLI
Storage: Intel 750 HHHL PCIe 400GB SSD, Samsung 840 Evo 500GB SSD, 4 2TB WD Red HHD
PSU: Corsair AX860
Optical: Asus BW-12B1ST Blu Ray Writer (I am old school like that lol)
Monitors: Asus VN248H-P triple monitors
Case: Corsair 760T
Accessories: ROG Front Base

 

 

Hey grumpy4869 and welcome to the community :)
 
To be honest, I haven't tried this, but you should be OK since the RAID controller of the motherboard handles the SATA drives while the SSD sits in a PCIe slot. I looked around on the internet and there isn't much data on the matter. I'm thinking you shouldn't have problems setting up the 4 WD Red drives in RAID10 from BIOS without affecting the PCIe SSD. Do try it out and post here so others can see the result and possibly provide some advice. :)
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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I will do just that.  Thanks for the reply!

Do not ask what the world needs.  Instead ask what makes you come alive, and go and do it.  Because what the world needs, is people who have come alive.

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SNIP

 

 

Yeah I dont see why woulnt work. Unless the normal Sata ports are disable when you connect a NVME drive (dont see why would do it) I dont see a problem with that setup.

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When you create a RAID array, you define the disks you want to add to it.

Wether or not the board supports both NVMe and RAID config simultaenously would be up to the BIOS support, but i'd be pretty confident that ASUS factored that in :)

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  • 1 month later...

Hello all,

 

  as promised I am updating this thread now that I have completed this build.  I am currently running 4 WD Red's in RAID 10, one Samsung 840 Evo in AHCI, and one Intel 750 PCIe in NVMe all on the same motherboard.  Here is how I accomplished this.

 

1.  updated BIOS to ensure NVMe support

2.  physically installed WD Red's and Intel 750

3.  verified that NVMe drive was present in boot settings under NVMe

4.  changed all SATA ports that had drives plugged in to SATA in the UEFI

5.  UEFI installed Windows 8.1 onto Intel 750

6.  booted into windows and installed all updates

7.  downloaded Intel RST package

8.  Initialized WD drives with Intel RST (you may or may not have to complete this step.  My drives were brand new so I had to do it. Note: this process takes a long time to complete-mine took 10 hours overnight)

9.  rebooted computer and went into the Intel RST BIOS utility (CTRL+I during POST)

10. created RAID 10 array and added WD Red's to array (the Intel 750 did not even show up on this screen as it is not RAIDable with this utility apparently)

11. Rebooted into windows

12. went into disk management in Windows and formatted the RAID array (now showing as one large drive) and assigned drive letter S: (you can set it as whatever letter you want that is available)

13. Rebooted computer and set UEFI to only boot from Intel 750

14. Shut down computer

15. physically installed Samsung EVO

16. set corresponding SATA port to AHCI in UEFI (note: my boot drive for Windows was the Intel drive only so I did not get any of the boot errors or BSOD that users commonly get when changing this setting after a Windows install-as far as Windows was concerned, the Samsung Evo was just another storage drive with crap on it)

17. set UEFI to ignore Samsung Evo as a boot drive

18. booted into windows

19. transferred desired files from Samsung Evo to my desired drives on new build-my pictures and my videos contents to RAID 10 array and my documents and my music to Intel 750 (yes I backed up this data before doing this)

20. went into disk management and reformatted Samsung Evo (it was used on a previous computer and had windows 7 and a bunch of other stuff on it i.e the stuff that I just transferred from this drive to my other drives)

21. set drive letter to R: (see note on step 12)

22. moved my documents and my music folders back to Samsung Evo

23. used test files to ensure that everything was working correctly

24. ran benchmarks to assess performance-it is awesome for my needs

Do not ask what the world needs.  Instead ask what makes you come alive, and go and do it.  Because what the world needs, is people who have come alive.

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If I think you were trying to use Intel RST the way it was intended.

 

I believe you should of put the Windows OS on the Raid array (after creating the array in BIOS menus) and added the 750 series SSD afterward.

Then used the Intel RST software to setup the SSD as the accelerated disk.

Can Anybody Link A Virtual Machine while I go download some RAM?

 

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If I think you were trying to use Intel RST the way it was intended.

 

I believe you should of put the Windows OS on the Raid array (after creating the array in BIOS menus) and added the 750 series SSD afterward.

Then used the Intel RST software to setup the SSD as the accelerated disk.

 

I'm sorry, I am not understanding your post.  My goal was to have a RAID 10 setup as a file storage for my large library of videos and pictures.  I wanted my documents and other office product stuff on my 840 pro.  And I wanted my programs and OS on the Intel 750 SSD (which is obviously my boot drive). This is what I have accomplished with my instructions above.  I did not want my OS on the RAID array.  I thought the purpose of RST was to set up and maintain RAID arrays and that is what I used it for.  I use Intel SSD toolbox to optimize the Intel 750 performance and Samsung Magician to optimize the performance of the Samsung Pro.  Am I missing something?

Do not ask what the world needs.  Instead ask what makes you come alive, and go and do it.  Because what the world needs, is people who have come alive.

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Is does do management but a big advantage it provides is being able to add a cache drive (an ssd) to pre-load frequently used apps on it so they load faster then the media they were normally put on (an hdd)

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/rapid-storage-technology.html

Intel Smart Response Technology is a feature of Intel Rapid Storage Technology that recognizes and automatically stores your most frequently used applications and data into a high performance SSD while giving you full access to the large storage capacity of a hard disk drive (HDD). This enables a lower-cost, small-capacity SSD to be used in conjunction with a high-capacity HDD. Intel® Smart Response Technology enables your system to perform faster than a system with just a HDD.

Can Anybody Link A Virtual Machine while I go download some RAM?

 

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Thanks for clarifying.  I just checked my settings and Cache is definitely enabled.  The option that I selected was "read only."  I am not sure which disk the cache is utilizing though.  In any case, I don't think that it is super relevant in my particular usage model as I am just using the array to store photo's and videos that aren't accessed often.  If the operating system was on my RAID array, this would have been more important I think.  

 

 

Do not ask what the world needs.  Instead ask what makes you come alive, and go and do it.  Because what the world needs, is people who have come alive.

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~snip~

 

Great job explaining what you did. :) I believe you should have a pretty solid and healthy setup. Do make sure to monitor the health of your drives just to be on the safe side and keep backups of everything important on separate drives that are not attached to your system. RAID is not a backup as it does not give you redundancy against user mistakes, data corruption, malware or physical damage of your system. :) 
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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