Asus MB install while not erasing my Raid 0 config. drives

[Nissehult]

Hi all!

I've searched hi and low and so far I have been unable to find a thread that describes my current **hairloss** inducing issue! With all the great posts here I'm banking on you guys to prevent further losses...

Just set up my rig with the Asus P6T Deluxe V2 MB (Corsair 3xDDR3's memory on A1,B1 and C1 slots) since my old MB fried. I have a WD 250 Gb main drive that is partitioned into one segment for the OS and the other partition for storage. I also have 2xWD Raptor's configured in Raid 0. (I also have one additional storage drive but I doubt that has anything to do with it)

Here comes the issue: The MB (system) will not recognize that two drives I have are already configured as Raid 0.

I've tried to start up with all drives as IDE's and then trying to configure under the storage manager (to get my two drives to be recognized as a single Raid 0 drive again).

I've disabled and enabled every possible permutation of Marvel's storage controller and storage boot ROM. Have it currently disabled.

I disabled the ExpressGate and the Full Screen Logo.

I've set my OP system on a partition on a drive assigned to SATA port 1, another storage unit to port 2, the Raid's to Port 3 and 4 and finally the CD/DVD to Port 5.

I can fire the system fine under "all drives on IDE setting" and I could also go into the Raid setting to have the option to set up the Raid 0 again (at the cost of loosing everything I have on those drives).

I'm running Vista 64 (yeah - I know....I'm sorry...).

Is there any way to be able to have the system recognize the existing Raid 0 drives and prevent the loss if all the "goodies" I have there???

Any further troubleshooting options are greatly appreciated!! Cheers!!

 

[GhislainG]

How were the drives configured on the old motherboard? Was the old motherboard based on an Intel ICHxR chipset? If so, did you configure the ICH10R for RAID? It won't work if the controller is configured for IDE or AHCI or if the old motherboard was based on a non-Intel (or possibly Marvell) chipset.

 

[Nissehult]

Ok, might be that I'm hosed here then. I had a Elitegroup PN2-SLI2+ (V1.0)
NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI Motherboard

CHIPSET
NVIDIA nFORCE 680iSLI C55XE/MCP55PXE
North Bridge:C55XE
South Bridge:MCP55PXE
NVIDIA MediaShield™ RAID supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD.

Any ideas on how to prevent future "events"? (couple of TB worth of back-up drives....

Thanks!!

 

[GhislainG]

Regular backups go a long way towards data loss prevention. Intel provides an upgrade path from ICH5R all the way to ICH10R, but not from nVidia or other chipsets.

 

[daship]

Yup your hosed.

 

[Nissehult]

Ok, bit the bullet - set the two drives to Raid 0 again, wiped them but was unable to get past the "blue screen of death" while having the BIOS storage setting set to Raid. Went back to IDE - went into the storage manager, spanned the drives, restarted (still under IDE config), got some errors with missing drives (deleted them) - finally got the option to select the two drives and have them configured to Striped, did so and formatted again.

Now I have the drives set as Raid 0 but the BIOS is set to "IDE" - Anyone know how / why this can be? Thanks!!

 

[GhislainG]

You're using Windows RAID and not the Intel Matrix RAID. If your OS is Vista or Windows 7, it's relatively easy to enable AHCI and then RAID. This thread discusses how to do it for both: http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardware/112584-how-enable-ahci-raid-mode-without-reinstalling-windows-p35-ich9-ich9r-5.html

 

[jitpublisher]

Yeah, it sounds like you need to read up on how to set up RAID.
You enable the RAID controller in your BIOS.
You will then see an addtional line during POST, that will say something like "Press ctrl-F2 to enter the blah blah blah SCSI or RAID BIOS or Utility" or something to the effect.
You will then find yourself in the RAID BIOS, where you select, assign the drives, and build the array.
Then you reboot, go back into your regular BIOS, set the RAID ARRAY for storage or bootable, set the boot order if it is bootable, then you enter Windows, or the Windows setup install the RAID drivers. (you can probably skip this step, as Vista and Win 7 will have the drivers.)

You are messing around with software RAID inside of Windows, which is completely worthless, unless you care nothing about performance, and simply want your drives to all show up as 1 big old slow, hulking, creaking, cracking, sorry excuse for storing any data on piece of crap.

 

[rand_79]

If its an intel ichxr you can also install the 8.8 version of intel matrix drivers and they will let you create the matrix raid from windows.

DO NOT USE 8.9 matrix drivers as they are still bugged.. google matrix 8.9 busted
I had to reinstall after installing those.. sigh.

 

[Nissehult]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the help!!

G, thanks for your help - I felt that messing around with the sys files was a bit above my level so I simply did this:

Wiped the drives, split then to raw state as single drives.

Went back to IDE setting.

Formatted the drives including wiping the OS drive (a note on one of Intel's forums stated that the Raid set-up does not work if you already have the OS installed, the fix you proposed I assume would allow the user to "save themselves" from wiping the OS). In my case, no worries - OS gone.

Back to set the Raid setting in the BIOS.

Configured the Raid drives in the Utilities (yes, thanks Jit, I did that before but did not explicitly call it out. It's ctrl-I that takes you to the raid utility under Intel Matrix).

Continue to reboot and start loading the OS.

Formatted the drives (OS drive and the Raid 0 config. now "single" drive during the OS installation). Visa 64 as mentioned before.

Rebooted like normal during installation.

Upon completion, entered the Disk Manager to format the new raid drive (showing up as intended, single drive w/o further action required).

Ran DiskBench with two threaded files 100 MB blocks at 500 MB each (total 1 GB) with 56 MB/s transfer rate (a bit low I think, should be up in the 70's so there might be some remaining issues). I'll try to update with the 8.8 matrix drives as rand suggests to see if that makes a difference (any tools in there to optimize??).

Thanks again for the help and feedback!