Hi,
I just built a new system using an Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 motherboard and I've having problems getting the RAID set up.
This motherboard has 7 SATA III ports. Ports 1-4 are the "default" ports I guess is the best way to describe them. Their connectors are all grouped together in one block. These ports can be configured as a group in the BIOS as IDE, AHCI, or RAID.
Port 5 is an odd animal. It's a vertical connector all by itself set in somewhat away from the side of the board. Its BIOS configuration is partially dependent on ports 1-4. If the other ports are setup as IDE, then 5 must be IDE. If 1-4 are AHCI, then 5 can be AHCI or IDE. If 1-4 are RAID, then 5 can be RAID or IDE.
The other two ports are called ASMedia ports. There doesn't seem to be any way to configure them since they don't show up in the BIOS, but they work. The manual makes the somewhat odd statement that only data drives should be connected to these. Optical drives are not allowed.
I currently have an SSD connected to one of the ASMedia ports. It is the Windows system disk. I have three 2TB drives connected to ports 1-4 and a DVD writer connected to port 5.
What I planned to do was use the 2TB drives in a RAID-5 configuration to use as my data drive. I went in to the BIOS and set ports 1-4 to RAID and I set port 5 to IDE. Then I went into the RAID configuration utility and added all 3 drives to the array. It reports their status as good and shows them assigned to the array. It all seems pretty simple. Yeah, right. Here's where the problems start.
In the Windows 8 Drive Management, I don't see a RAID array. I see the three individual disks. I've tried every combination of options in the BIOS to no avail. I even tried switching them to JBOD. That actually worked. I saw one drive available with 2 recommended partitions. But I don't want JBOD, I want RAID-5. In Windows I tried making them dynamic drives, switching the MBR to GPT and back, but nothing made any difference. I'm still seeing 3 blasted drives.
I tried flashing the BIOS to the latest version. That was nearly a disaster. The latest version (2003 I think) freezes when you try to save the settings. I was able to back it down a version, which was still a version newer than what the board came with. Didn't make any difference at all.
So I'm flustered. I've tried everything I know. Do any of you wizards have any insight that may help resolve this? Thanks a bunch!
I just built a new system using an Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 motherboard and I've having problems getting the RAID set up.
This motherboard has 7 SATA III ports. Ports 1-4 are the "default" ports I guess is the best way to describe them. Their connectors are all grouped together in one block. These ports can be configured as a group in the BIOS as IDE, AHCI, or RAID.
Port 5 is an odd animal. It's a vertical connector all by itself set in somewhat away from the side of the board. Its BIOS configuration is partially dependent on ports 1-4. If the other ports are setup as IDE, then 5 must be IDE. If 1-4 are AHCI, then 5 can be AHCI or IDE. If 1-4 are RAID, then 5 can be RAID or IDE.
The other two ports are called ASMedia ports. There doesn't seem to be any way to configure them since they don't show up in the BIOS, but they work. The manual makes the somewhat odd statement that only data drives should be connected to these. Optical drives are not allowed.
I currently have an SSD connected to one of the ASMedia ports. It is the Windows system disk. I have three 2TB drives connected to ports 1-4 and a DVD writer connected to port 5.
What I planned to do was use the 2TB drives in a RAID-5 configuration to use as my data drive. I went in to the BIOS and set ports 1-4 to RAID and I set port 5 to IDE. Then I went into the RAID configuration utility and added all 3 drives to the array. It reports their status as good and shows them assigned to the array. It all seems pretty simple. Yeah, right. Here's where the problems start.
In the Windows 8 Drive Management, I don't see a RAID array. I see the three individual disks. I've tried every combination of options in the BIOS to no avail. I even tried switching them to JBOD. That actually worked. I saw one drive available with 2 recommended partitions. But I don't want JBOD, I want RAID-5. In Windows I tried making them dynamic drives, switching the MBR to GPT and back, but nothing made any difference. I'm still seeing 3 blasted drives.
I tried flashing the BIOS to the latest version. That was nearly a disaster. The latest version (2003 I think) freezes when you try to save the settings. I was able to back it down a version, which was still a version newer than what the board came with. Didn't make any difference at all.
So I'm flustered. I've tried everything I know. Do any of you wizards have any insight that may help resolve this? Thanks a bunch!
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