Problem Using Bootable Samsung SM951 M.2 NVMe RAID 0

[amp88]

Hi, all. Firstly, let me say that due to an unfortunate (and seriously frustrating!) PSU problem the new system I'm working on isn't in an operable state. That means I won't actually be able to test any suggestions you might have, but I'd like to get some input on things I can test when the replacement PSU arrives.

System specs:

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K

CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3

Motherboard: ASUS Z170-A LGA1151 (I was running BIOS version 0504, did not get a chance to test on version 0604, but the description for it only says "Improve system stability.")

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 C16

Primary Storage: 2 x Samsung 128GB SM951 M.2 NVMe SSDs in PCIe RAID 0

Secondary Storage: Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB

Video Card: 4GB Asus GTX 970 STRIX Direct CU II

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Titanium Windowless

Power Supply: Corsair AX760 80+ Platinum Fully Modular

Optical Drive: LG BH10LS38 Blu-ray Writer

Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit

Here are the steps I followed, after creating a bootable Windows 8.1 installation on a USB flash drive:

UEFI BIOS:

1. Advanced\Onboard Devices Configuration -> PCI-EX16_3 Bandwidth -> Changed from 'Auto' to 'x4 Mode'.

2. Created a PCIe RAID using EZ Tuning Wizard.

After the above, when I went into:

Advanced\Intel Rapid Storage Technology\RAID VOLUME INFO

...it displayed that the RAID was bootable:

However, it did not appear in the device list in the Boot Menu:

(Note that 'InnostorInnostor 1.00' and 'Generic STORAGE DEVICE 9407' entries are the USB drive containing my bootable Windows 8.1 64-bit installation and the flash drive I was capturing screenshots to, respectively)

When I subsequently attempted to install Windows (just to check), no devices were shown at the "Where do you want to install Windows?" step.

After that, I went into the 'Boot\CSM (Compatability Support Module)' section and changed "Boot from PCI-E/PCI Expansion Devices" to "UEFI driver first", and this made no difference.

Prior to me putting the SM951 drives in a RAID 0, they did appear in the boot menu (along with my WD Green drive and Blu-ray drive, which were connected at the time to check the SATA setup):

I deleted the RAID volume and booted into the Windows installer. Both the SM951 drives appeared in the "Where do you want to install Windows?" step:

(Apologies for the low quality)

So, I'm quite baffled by this. The drives are recognised, the RAID was created and the Intel RST info says it's bootable, however it doesn't appear in the boot menu. Did I forget to change a setting? Has anyone got any suggestions at all?

Keep in mind that I won't be able to test any suggestions until I get a new PSU in (assuming nothing else was taken out when it failed).

Thanks for reading, hopefully you can help.

[stealth80]

I had an issue like this installing my 941, (albeit none raid) it was very similar to what you experienced in that last photo to the extent that I installed it but couldn't boot from it. Let me rack my brains and think what the issue was ...

[stealth80]

would the M.2/sata express setting affect raid? I have mine set to M.2 (albeit it isn't sata express) even though its in a PCIE port with an adapter

[amp88]

would the M.2/sata express setting affect raid? I have mine set to M.2 (albeit it isn't sata express) even though its in a PCIE port with an adapter

Thanks for the replies. Do you mean the "M.2 and SATA Express SATA Mode Configuration" option in the first screenshot? That sounds like it could be a good suggestion, and I'm surprised I didn't change it myself...

The manual says:

 

[M.2] SATA mode will be switched to M.2. SATA Express can only support PCIE devices.

[sATA Express] SATA mode will be switched to SATA Express. M.2 can only support PCIE devices.

I'll definitely give this one a try if/when I can. Thanks.

[stealth80]

Are you using adapters or the built in + an adapter?

[amp88]

Are you using adapters or the built in + an adapter?

One is in the board and the other is in a Lycom DT-120 adapter in the PCIe_16x3 slot. Note that although the product page for the DT-120 does say "Per Samsung spec, Samsung PCIe Based M.2 SSD module doesn’t support OS booting" this appears not to be the case any more. There are a number of people who've used this adapter with an SM951 to create bootable Windows installations, e.g. see here:

 

Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 Motherboard. Boots the XP941/SM951 from the M.2 socket, but note that it's only 2x PCIe lanes, and that's probably the case with other Gigabyte X99 boards as well. Fortunately you can purchase the Lycom DT-120 adapter card, plug in the XP941/SM951 and it will boot and run at full speed. Thanks to user 'BVanMan' for giving this a go and advising of the happy news in this comment.

[stealth80]

Haha I'm using that adapter:

 

 

If you have one card in the M.2 slot I would defo think that that setting needs to be set to M.2 not SATA Exp

[amp88]

Haha I'm using that adapter:

 

If you have one card in the M.2 slot I would defo think that that setting needs to be set to M.2 not SATA Exp

Nice. I think you're probably right, but I'll wait to mark your post as the solution until I've tested it, just in case I've got a different issue. Thanks again.

[amp88]

If you have one card in the M.2 slot I would defo think that that setting needs to be set to M.2 not SATA Exp

I got the new PSU in yesterday and tried to change the setting over to M.2, but it doesn't persist after saving and restarting:

Unfortunately I'm at a loss again. After trying, and failing, the above, I deleted the RAID again and installed Windows 8.1 on a single drive (the installation process went flawlessly), just to see what it was like. I really want to get this RAID working though...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[amp88]

OK, I may have just made some progress. I managed to install Windows 8.1 on the RAID, using the Intel RST RAID Driver during the Windows install progress. However, the RAID still isn't appearing in the Boot Menu in the BIOS. I don't know if this is a red herring or actual progress...

[stealth80]

I don't know about Z710, but my Z97 board needed to utilise the UEFI Driver during the install or the drives won't be detected. Have you enabled the NVMe in the Bios?

[amp88]

I don't know about Z710, but my Z97 board needed to utilise the UEFI Driver during the install or the drives won't be detected. Have you enabled the NVMe in the Bios?

I should have noted that I did successfully install Windows 8.1 to a single SM951 drive (i.e. I deleted the RAID for testing) with no problems, and I was able to boot from it. So I think it's got to be a problem with the RAID, rather than NVMe. Thanks for the quick reply.

[stealth80]

was that the drive using the adpater, or the one in the m.2?

[amp88]

was that the drive using the adpater, or the one in the m.2?

It was on the drive in the motherboard's M.2 slot.

Now, I have absolutely no idea how I managed to do it, but it appears as though the RAID is working and bootable. I went back in and fiddled with the CSM settings again, but I don't think I changed them to anything I hadn't tried before. I'm still installing drivers and a couple of programs, but it looks as though (touch wood!) it might actually be working OK...

Thanks again for your help!

[stealth80]

awesome, post some speed tests I would like to see how quick they are

[amp88]

awesome, post some speed tests I would like to see how quick they are

Unfortunately it appears I called it "working" too soon...

Shortly after my last post I had a system lockup, to the point where I couldn't move the mouse, while I was trying to install more programs. I did a reset and tried to install again and the same thing happened. The third time I tried a different program (thinking there was perhaps a problem with the installer), but the same thing happened again.

Here's an example of the problem happening (sorry for the poor quality):

You can see at around 1:20 the disk activity pegs at 100%, but nothing is actually being read/written. After a few more cycles of the system hang/reboot, I got a notification from Intel RST that something was wrong with the RAID volume:

After the next system hang/reboot sequence, the RAID volume didn't appear in the boot menu, so I was back to square one...

I did manage to get a couple of benchmarks of the RAID in, but only after a few attempts:

I don't know why the 4k read performance is so low compared to the 4k write. The random performance scaling is also disappointing, if you compare them to the single drive benchmarks below. However, that may be related to the general RAID problems I was having, and may not be indicative of typical scaling performance of these drives in this motherboard...

After the frustration of that experience, I went back to single drives and installed Windows 8.1 on the M.2 drive in the motherboard with no problems again, and it's running fine. I can also access the M.2 in the Lycom DT-120 adapter with no problems, and reading/writing between the two drives works well too. So far I've done a few benchmarks (including CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, 3DMark Fire Strike / Sky Diver, PCMark Vantage and Geekbench) and rebooted the system a few times with no hangs. So, I can only conclude that the problem is something to do with the RAID configuration in the BIOS or with how it interacts with Windows 8.1. At this point I think it's pretty clear to see that a single 256GB drive would have been the better option...

Here are a couple of benchmarks for the boot drive (in the motherboard's M.2 slot):

...and for the second drive (in the Lycom DT-120 adapter):

Again, I have no explanation for the low 4k read performance, compared to 4k write.

[stealth80]

I don't know if this can help:

 

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/427935-ssd-raid-0-setup-before-win-10-install/

[amp88]

I don't know if this can help:

 

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/427935-ssd-raid-0-setup-before-win-10-install/

Thanks again for the suggestion, but at this point I've decided to call it quits for getting the RAID working. I've been using the drives separately now and I've had no problems at all (installed quite a few applications, done numerous benchmarks (on storage, graphics and overall system performance) and used it a little bit for general tasks (photo/video editing, browsing etc) over the course of most of yesterday and today. I think at this point my problems were caused by either a BIOS issue or an Intel/Windows driver issue, which could be fixed in the future. Unfortunately I want to start using this system in the next few days (there's a local hot air balloon festival starting on Friday and I'd like to use the new machine for editing), so I'm just going to keep the separate drive setup for the moment. In the future I may decide to try the RAID again, but only if I've seen some experience from other people who've got it rock solid.

Thanks for your help in this thread, but it looks like we were defeated by being on the bleeding edge of technology!

[skyfire12]

Looks like you were right about the RAID being the issue AMP88...specifically the Intel Rapid Storage drivers you used to create the array. They have no support for nvme yet.... read here on P.C World article: "Also, while there’s no technical barrier to running NVMe drives in RAID, Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology, which is the RAID on most Intel motherboards, doesn’t support it yet. You could use Windows RAID, but then you couldn’t boot from your setup."

[skyfire12]

Full article I took exerpt from here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2904340/intel-750-series-ssd-review-storage-so-fast-only-the-highest-end-pcs-can-keep-up.html

And keep me posted once driver support exists...Id like to do the same thing. Thanks.

[amp88]

Full article I took exerpt from here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2904340/intel-750-series-ssd-review-storage-so-fast-only-the-highest-end-pcs-can-keep-up.html

And keep me posted once driver support exists...Id like to do the same thing. Thanks.

Thanks for the link. I think I'll have another look at the feasibility of doing the RAID when I run out of space on these drives and get a new SATA SSD for storage, probably some time in the first half of next year. Perhaps by then it'll be properly supported and some other people will have done the pioneering of making it work in the real world.