Setting up RAID

[Jaeden Hudson]

Ok. First I will start with what hardware I have. I have an Asus Strix ROG x370-f motherboard. I have 2 1tb sata drives and one crucial SSD. Running windows 10.

 

I will give you a back story first so you know what is gong on. I upgraded my motherboard. My old setup had a raid 1 config for the 2 1tb drives. Once I upgraded my motherboard, the raid config obviously was not there. Now the OS boots just fine right now. I did not do a re-install of windows. Windows sees 3 drives right now.

 

Here is my problem,

I set the two 1tb drives up as RAID 1. If I boot to windows in AHCI mode, the OS boots just fine but does not see the RAID array. I figured that would happen. So I went into the bios and changed the sata mode to RAID. Once I did that, the OS bluescreens at boot with inaccessible boot device. After doing a days worth of googling, and trying a crap ton of different things, I can not seem to figure this out. If the bios is in RAID mode, I can not get to safe mode either. I decided to back up my OS drive and try to re-install windows, but the setup does not see any drives at all. So I can't even clean install windows. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Radium_Angel]

Historically, once Windows is installed with the default drivers for the hard drives (IDE/AHCI/RAID) moving to a different configuration with BSoD the system.

Moving RAID is much much harder, since it was set up for the other motherboard. The only way to move forward (that isn't a massive PITA) is to break the RAID (thus losing everything on the RAID) and start fresh with your new motherboard.

 

You *might* be able to set your new MB to IDE and see if it'll boot, but you still likely will not see the RAID.

[Jaeden Hudson]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

Historically, once Windows is installed with the default drivers for the hard drives (IDE/AHCI/RAID) moving to a different configuration with BSoD the system.

Moving RAID is much much harder, since it was set up for the other motherboard. The only way to move forward (that isn't a massive PITA) is to break the RAID (thus losing everything on the RAID) and start fresh with your new motherboard.

 

You *might* be able to set your new MB to IDE and see if it'll boot, but you still likely will not see the RAID.

I should have clarified and I apologize, I already broke the RAID and set it up to this motherboard. The only issue now is in AHCI mode, the OS boots fine, but the RAID array is missing. If I go to RAID mode, the OS Bluescreens and gives that error. I figured I would do a fresh install, but the setup doesn't see anything in RAID mode

[Radium_Angel]

Oh, that sort of changes things.

Hmmmm....

As you know, with RAID you are supposed to use identical drives.

I use a NAS for my data, I've not run across a mobo that can support a single drive for the OS and a second set for RAID.

Perhaps contact the mobo maker and see what they say?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Don't use motherboard raid, it sucks. Just use storage spaces in windows. Its much better here in almost all ways.

 

Just fire up storage spaces, and make a mirrored pool.

[NMS]

Have you checked if you used the correct SATA ports? Most of the time, only the first 2 SATA ports support RAID. So that's where your RAID drives would be (at 0 and 1), while your OS would be in the next one (2).

 

Also, the RAID mode should only be set for those ports.

 

Example:

Port 0, Port 1 -> RAID

Port 2 -> AHCI.

 

You can't just set up RAID for every port.

Edited March 6, 2018 by NMS

[Jaeden Hudson]

1 hour ago, NMS said:

Have you checked if you used the correct SATA ports? Most of the time, only the first 2 SATA ports support RAID. So that's where your RAID drives would be (at 0 and 1), while your OS would be in the next one (2).

 

Also, the RAID mode should only be set for those ports.

 

Example:

Port 0, Port 1 -> RAID

Port 2 -> AHCI.

 

You can't just set up RAID for every port.

I guess I am a bit confused. The motherboard does not have any bios setting regarding what SATA ports I can use for RAID. I am using the first 2 ports for the two 1tb drives and the third port for the SSD. The only setting I have available to me is to either switch it from AHCI or RAID.

[Jaeden Hudson]

I may have figured it out. It looks like my OS drive was part of an array that I did not make. I deleted that array (it also wiped everything out too, but I made a backup) and will report back if I m still having issues after I restore the backup

[Helly]

Since the controller is in raid mode and all the drives are connected to it you will need the raid drivers of your motherboard to be able to see the drives during setup. My advice would be to disconnect the HDD's and install the system on the SSD. Once it's installed, reconnect the HDD's (the motherboard will keep the array, no need to set it up again) and use the system as normally.

 

The reason to disconnect the HDD's during install is that i have noticed in the past that windows decides it's a really good idea to keep the bootloader on the HDD's while the actual OS is on the SSD. Sometimes it does this, other times it doesn't. So it's best to keep only the drive that will hold the OS in the system and disconnect all others during installation.

 

Another possibility is to check if your motherboard happens to have 2 controllers (lots of motherboards do) and just connect the SSD to the other controller which is in AHCI and will detect the drive during installation without drivers needing to be installed. You can easily recognize sata ports from another controller because they will be in a different color.

[Jaeden Hudson]

So I did end up getting it to work after re-installing windows. However, I ditched the idea of a hardware raid as I was just having too many issues with it. I loaded my OS backup and went the software raid route. I think its called storage spaces or something. It works for what I need so I am happy.