Dereck47 :
Your motherboard has 9 SATA ports (8 internal and 1 external), so you can have up to 9 drives connected. I doubt it that only 4 HDDs and 1 SSD are saturating your board.
Thank you for the quick reply.
It's not the Motherboard itself but the drive controller. I'm not saying you are not correct, however, Samsung support and several of my more knowledgable associates are of this opinion. Due to Windows 7 compatibility and performance issues with the Marvell and JMicron controllers, all drives are installed on the Intel controller. The issue only arises during a sustained write from the SSD to the RAID array. As well, based on Intel's specification sheet (not the whitepaper), the total combined throughput of this controller appears to be 12Gb/s. I can't believe simultaneous writes to 4 hard drives while reading from a SSD doesn't have the ability to exceed this.
Dereck47 :
More than likely your problem is software/driver related, or maybe even memory related.
This was my first thought as well. When first attempting to solve this issue I updated all of the drivers. This was a while ago, and the Intel driver you list is newer than the one presently installed. I will update it ASAP.
Dereck47 :
Try these tips before you buy a controller card:
1.) Motherboard's BIOS should be on the latest version (version 3603 if your O/S is Win7 or Win8)
Check, 3603 11/09/2012
Dereck47 :
2.) SSD should be on firmware version DXM06B0Q
Check
Dereck47 :
3.) Latest Intel RAID drivers (12.8.0.1016) should be installed
As mentioned above, I updated to the latest version available at the time I was originally investigating the issue, 11.6.0.1030 (which is still newer than the one listed on the ASUS site). I will see download these directly from the Intel site.
Dereck47 :
4.) HDDs should be on Intel ports SATA3G_3 thru SATA3G_6
Check
Dereck47 :
5.) SSD should be on Intel port SATA6G_1 or SATA6G_2
Check
Dereck47 :
Also, how did you install the O/S on your SSD? Your SSD should have been the only drive connected during install; and your Intel SATA ports should have been in RAID mode prior to install.
Check. Yes, I installed my OS, prior to installing the RAID array and restoring my data.
Dereck47 :
You can also do a Bing or Google search for "BSOD reader" or "BSOD viewer" and install software in order to try to narrow down the cause of your BSODs.
I really hadn't looked at this, as the BSOD was pointing to the Intel controller with a C5 (typically hardware or driver issue). At this point I was already resolved to install a new controller, unless the consensus of experts here, such as yourself, think otherwise.
UPDATE: I updated the Intel RAID drivers to 12.9.0.1001. I will attempt to reproduce the fault shortly and see if it has any effect. I may still want to upgrade the RAID controller, as to support SATA III, if anyone thinks it would make a difference.
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