My friend recently bought two Samsung 850 EVOs so he could put them in RAID 0 and use that as his primary OS.
He has an AsRock 990FX Killer motherboard. He sets his storage controller to RAID instead of AHCI. He configured the RAID array and it verified as functional. He goes to install Windows, and it fails to recognise his RAID array.
Any ideas?
We put in the disc that came with the motherboard and found the RAID driver, and loaded it into the Windows installer. However, after the driver is loaded, the drives still don't show up. Any ideas?
He went ahead and temporarily installed Windows to one SSD for now, but he really really wants to RAID those SSDs. He tried software RAID to no avail, but he said he didn't really know what he was doing.
Any ideas?
I think a software RAID would be more practical for him, and knowing him personally, he isn't super techy.
What version of Windows are we talking about? I've set up half a dozen arrays on Vista and Win7 and never needed any drivers. Not sure how 8.1 and 10 deal with it, but I find it really surprising that the installer doesn't recognize the RAID array. Once it's set up in the BIOS, the Windows installer should see it as just any regular drive.
First and foremost is update your bios to the latest version. That usually helps.
Second, I went to the asrock website to see what the latest drivers were and I notice something interesting. Its probably nothing, but when you try to look for windows 8.1 drivers for RAID, you are actually given windows 10 drivers.
They should still work on windows 8.1, but if all else fails you could try windows 10.
I am using Intel Rapid Storage tech, so I can't be much help with your AMD mobo. My issue is sometimes one drive just won't show up in BIOS. I have to fiddle about with BIOS until I get the RAID to show up again. It gives me a heart attack every time.
I think I had a similar issue, I removed all the drives from the system except the two RAID drives (the SSD's) and the RAID would show up. Try disabling secure boot as well, the WIndows 10 CD did not like it.
Make sure you set the RAID to write back, read ahead as well when you build it.
Be aware though, I've had stability issues with RAID 0 (using a 990FX Sabertooth from ASUS), I've had to reinstall Windows a few times. Make sure you have a second or third disk for important files, you may need to format once a year or so.
One day I may replace my RAID with a fast M.2. Fortunately, many PC owners live in Unlimitedbudgetland. I am not one of them. My Z97 mobo has enough PCI lanes to do either SLI or M.2, but not both at the same time. Initially I made the choice to SLI my old GPU over using a PCIe or M.2 drive. After I get a new single card GPU, then I can consider a faster SSD.
You don't RAID SSDs on the AMD platform, only the Intel platform. The reason for this is TRIM is not supported on most RAIDs unless you have a RAID card designed to allow SSD RAID. It can be done on Intel because of IRST, which allowed for TRIM to supported in RAID 0 on Intel 6 series chipset and beyond.
This is not tooooo big of an issue so long as you keep an eye on things. I was able to raid SSDs in raid 0 on the 1366 platform when TRIM was not available at all and it went OK.
But I will agree it is definitely something to keep in mind.
