RAID Tech Support - Long time builder, First time Ryzen Build

Alright I just finished my new secondary build #ChibiPC 3.0 and am trying to setup a RAID array with my HDDs and use a Intel 600p NVMe drive for boot. The issue I am running into is if I load the RAID driver is causes my system to no longer boot. On install of windows I can see the NVMe drive until I load the RAID driver then it is no longer available.

To clarify this is not NVMe RAID but a NVME boot drive wth a 4 drive HDD RAID array. Usually I can figure out this sort of thing but I can really find anyone else dealing with this or concrete documentation from AMD.

Found a thread on LT saying you need to load in the order of Bottom, Driver, then Conig. However this doesnt make the NVMe Drive how up again in the windows installer.

This is my first time posting her since its been level on tech so If ive placed this in the wrong ctegory my bad and feel free to move it.

and now its looks like ive found this.

you would think that would have been resolved.

Maybe AMD isnt like Intel Chipset RAID where any non RAID drives just work in AHCI or NVMe. Seems like once the drivers are installed it only detects RAID array or Drives in RAID.

Any input from someone who has dealt with this before would be great.

Just thought I’d throw a bump on this. I anyone experienced with this can comment I’d be appreciative, thanks!

@SgtAwesomesauce can you add the helpdesk tag and move to HDD/SSD section ( which i believe is the correct ) also tag someone you know might help i cant at the top of my mind.

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Not sure who’s experienced with this.

I’ll add the #helpdesk tag and hopefully someone will get notified. I believe motherboards is the correct category. This is about a motherboard feature that interfaces with storage, not a storage issue. I hesitate to mention the big W yet.

As far as my 2c goes:

Don’t use a motherboard’s “hardware” raid. They all suck and they’re all unique when they inevitably lose data, which makes it harder for drivesavers to recover the data… It’s safer to use software raid from Windows (Storage Spaces) or Linux (MDRAID, LVM, BTrFS, ZFS).

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Yeah if I can’t get this to work I’ll just use storage spaces. I have the previous build while running H97 set up this way with no issues. Just seems like something that should be possible. If it is I would prefer to do it.

Basically as soon as I load the RAID drivers it sees the array but then no longer sees the NVMe drive I want to install windows on.

It should be, but I don’t know why it’s having issues. I’m not an expert and since no one else stepped in, I’m going to put up a batsignal:

@wendell, seen this before/any ideas?

Someone make a gif or emoticon for that yet?

:batsignal:

Apparently not.

you have to load the drivers in windows and format it as “amd nvme raid” (it just marks the disk) or, depending on bios, enable nvme raid in bios then mark the disk with bios. once you do that it will show up.

even on ryzen. its a bug on amd’s side for sure but if you can install windows to another disk, then setup the nvme disk, then reinstall again, that will work and not take a super long time. you just need the driver to mark it basically. I suppose theoretically you could actually do raid0/1 on ryzen since the driver? But the top or mid driver may not load/license that where the bottom driver grabs nvme when it shouldn’t

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So I have to setup the NVMe disk as RAID even though I only have one drive?

The RAID I was planning on doing was RAID10 on the 4 HDDs I have. The Intel 600p is just the boot/programs drive.

Seconding what sgtawesomesauce said:

I’ll elaborate.

Setting up RAID is generally trading complexity for availability…

The little issues like having to have the exact right driver stack to even be able to boot your image or having to put a single drive into a “single drive RAID” which of course doesn’t even “make sense” is just par-for-the-course with most Windows-Driver-based RAID systems

Generally Windows-Driver-based RAID (AMD chipset, Intel, etc) platforms don’t perform much better then simply using the OS built-in software RAID since they’re both using the main CPU, and system memory.

And for example if the RAID does go down, and then you need to try and recover data from it, it’s nice to not have the additional mental load of trying to remember how the driver stack is supposed to behave etc, while stressing over recovery

Also note you can’t always monitor S.M.A.R.T. values of the drives in some RAID arrays

If you do soldier on and get it up and running, I suggest testing the failure mode in the early stages, before putting important data on the drive, unplug one of the drives in the array to see what the drivers/firmware do etc.

Good Luck

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In addition, if you use the OS supplied disc management (storage spaces) it would be easier to move the array to a new motherboard when upgrading, without being tied to AMD/Intel

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I can get 2 drive arrays working in storage spaces but not 4 drive. In Disk Management 4 drive array works.

As for Chipset RAID so far I have failed to find a way where both the RAID array and the NVMe drive not in RAID show up and are accessible.

That is odd, I created a 2 way mirror via storage spaces, on win10pro, but they might have removed the ability.
Was also able to format the created space as a ReFS volume.
I thought they removed ReFS, but left storage spaces as is.

Guess I’m wrong

im actually on Win 10 Pro for Workstations now so i have ReFS support. Storage spaces still errors when i try to add more the 2 drives to a space. I tried like 1 drive and adding 2 or 3 more or 2 and adding 2 more but no dice. Ill see if this changes after a reload since ill be doing that after I get my OC locked in and testing finished.

no too many differences right now Pro vs Pro for Workstations but more features will be added to Workstations with the next update.

That is odd, as SS should allow mirrors, and parity (raid5) and should also allow for adding/removing drives.
The only stopper I could imagine, is if the drives have partitions or are initialised as mbf, rather than GPT

So i never did get RAID and not raid drives to bothe show up when the driver was loaded. There are new drivers with the launch of Z470 but my ASRock B350 has not had a UEFI update yet. Once it does I may give it another shot. Also I think that StoreMI thing might be Zen+ exclusive.

so I know im reviving the dead thread but looks like AMD fixed this they now have RAID drives just for SATA and ones for SATA and NVMe ill have to give it a try.

Good luck - Intel NVMe drives are known hazards on Ryzen with RAID enabled. Samsung drives are a go.