How to set up RAID 1 on Gigabyte GA-Z77P-D3

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

Hi Everyone, I seem to be spending half my life on this forum at the moment - doing lots of upgrading.

In the midst of working on all the other jobs that I’ve got going on at the moment with this PC, I suffered a mechanical hard drive failure (actually the first time that this has ever happened to me, and lesson learned). I did have most of the data on the disk backed up elsewhere, but unfortunately there was a bit of data there that I hadn’t got around to backing up (kicking myself as I write).

Sooooo, I read a bit around the topic of RAID, which I was only very dimly aware of in the past, and decided that I’d better get a little bit serious. What I want to do in this PC is just to have a RAID 1 configuration, with two 4GB drives, alongside the SSD housing the OS’s (Windows and Linux). I can see that it’s easy enough to set it up in Windows alone, but as I understand it, that won’t transfer across to Linux (when I actually get that working properly, with all my dual-booting “other-story” problems). When I go into the BIOS, I of course have a setting to change to a RAID configuration , but not much else as far as I can see. Of course I only want the two HDDs to be on RAID, not the SSD, but I can’t see that possibility (fair enough - it’s supposed to come along later - read on).

Here’s what I’ve done (that is, tried to do, and not got very far). So I follow the motherboard manual.

Step 1, no problem:

Snipped_20200908_101930_707
Snipped_20200908_101930_7071497×710 355 KB

And then on step 2 I’m stuck already:

Snipped_20200908_102009_503
Snipped_20200908_102009_5031087×607 28.2 KB

I’m not seeing this screen at all. Is that because the system is “confused” about what’s going on, with the SSD already there, or something else?

This motherboard is pretty old (and sorry if you’ve already read this on another of my several posts - I inherited this PC from a friend, and am really a keen amateur, wanting to understand what’s going on, rather than some expert builder). Any ideas why this thing isn’t working? And is it possible that I need to buy a simple RAID card if I want to configure those two drives, and not the SSD, with RAID?

Thanks as ever in advance to all you lovely people on this awesomely responsive forum :smiley:

2

You need to leave the bios and begin booting to see the prompt for the raid bios. They are separate entities. If you’re not seeing it then something is misconfigured.

You started this story off by talking about how you lost data because you didn’t back something up. Then you moved into talking about raid. The problem I have with this is raid is not a backup. It’s intended for uptime and only protects against a single failure mode. You should adjust your backup strategy.

3

Well, I did say that I do back things up, and just that I forgot to back up one thing. Annoying, but not the end of the world. I’m fine with the backup strategy, thanks, and would appreciate some more specific help with RAID.

4

What specifically do you need help with? Are you seeing the prompt after the board posts?

5

As stated already:

6

You didnt state if you left the bios or not. I have no way of knowing what you’ve done to get to the point you’re at. Help me help you.

7

Hi, yes, of course I saved and restarted, and no screen like that. Tried several times. Same result each time - just a blank screen.

8

Ok, cool… and the bios sata setting is still in RAID?

9

Yup

10

Then I’d say its safe to assume its hooped and you should seek a dedicated raid card.

Just as a sanity check, your bios looks mostly identical to the one in the manual right?

11

What do you mean? Are you asking if I updated the BIOS or something? The answer to that question would be “no”, but I don’t know if my friend had before I got the PC from him. Because I know it’s the right manual :smiley: , and so, sure, it looks the same :point_right:t2: :point_left:t2:

Obviously if I get a RAID card I don’t want to get something really fancy. There are only three bays in this PC, and whatever, it’s not going to last all that much longer. I’ll just want the cheapest one that will do the job. I’ve splashed out enough cash on this thing recently :grimacing:

12

yeah, just making sure it matches what you’ve got on the screen in case we’re missing something. I havent personally encountered this behavior before but I also dont use onboard raid controllers much. You might clear your cmos as a last ditch effort to see if it wants to play.

For the record there shouldnt be any issues with it getting confused by an SSD or anything like that. You shouldnt have issues getting to the bios screen for the controller.

As for a dedicated raid card, if I may be so bold as to suggest something…

The IBM m1015 is a common card with the LSI 9211-8i controller on it. These cards are usually capable of some form of raid stock and are relatively cheap, but not the cheapest. The reason I suggest this one in particular is you can flash it with firmware to turn it into an HBA card and use it with ZFS later on. ZFS is quite a bit more robust than plain old raid and so you could consider it an ‘investment’ in your data storage future.

This one ships from china so it would take a bit to get to you.

13

OK, let’s have a look… How many drives can you configure with that one? (not for now, but for future reference, as you said)

14

Oh, sorry, up to 16. Just saw that a millisecond after posting. Well, that’s a LOT!

15

typically they’re only good for up to 8.

16

Well, yes, I thought that sounded a bit outrageous.

And why is RAID 5 bracketed, and RAID 6 not mentioned at all? “Optional Advanced Feature Key”??? What do they mean by “optional”?

Obviously I’m nowhere close to creating some massive RAID 5 or 6 setup, but again, for future reference :grimacing: :rofl:

17

Its a physical device that unlocks those features. Its probably not capable of raid 6. This is a particularly old card. Quite frankly, raid 5 and 6 are somewhat pointless with todays software defined storage methods. The reason these cards are so popular (specifically any LSI 9211-8i card) is for the ability to flash it and then use it in a software array.

RAID itself is kinda dying out in favor of ZFS, or other filesystem based arrays.

18

Oh dear. There was me thinking that I was catching up :pensive: Well, thanks for the help anyway. I’ll just read a little bit more about that card, if I can find info that’s in English and not Chinese :grimacing:

19

Is this the same card, by the way (me being in the UK)?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBM-M1015-9220-8I-6GB-SAS2-SATA3-PCI-e-RAID-Controller-Card-8087-to-sata-9211-8/192928611664?hash=item2ceb70fd50:g:VPEAAOSwMYtc6Vpw

20

Not only is it the same card, its the same listing.