Agility 3 SSD RAID 0 Windows 7 Install Issues

[SamTheSammich]

My System:

ASUS P67 Sabertooth motherboard
Intel i5 2500k
2x EVGA GTX 580 SLi
2x OCZ Agility 3 240GB (RAID 0)
16GB G.SKILL RAM @ 1600MHz
(let me know if you need any other information)

I have both drives connected to the Intel SATA III 6GB/s ports on the motherboard. In the Intel storage manager, I put both SSDs on RAID 0 (128KB block) and restarted my computer. BIOS is set to RAID enabled. I booted from my Windows 7 install disc and began installing W7 Professional x64 on the array. Setup runs through the steps (copying files > expanding files > etc.) and restarts. When the computer restarts, it shows the Intel RAID status as healthy, but the screen goes black and nothing happens (no blinking cursor, nothing).

I kept restarting and managed to get past the Intel screen, but got the error:
"A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+alt+del to restart"

I restarted the whole process (deleted and recreated the array) and tried installing windows, but this time I created a new partition and hit install. Setup runs, restarts, but after the Intel RAID status, I get the black screen again. I left my computer on to see what happens, and after 5 minutes of a black screen, I get a blinking underscore cursor ( _ ).

I just noticed that in the Windows Setup window where you select the disk, I have the warning that "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu"

I'm banging my head against the wall here. What do I need to do to get Windows installed? (NOTE: The computer works fine with a standard HDD)

Thanks in advance!

 

[CaedenV]

Make sure of 2 things.
1) make sure that both drives are good. I love OCZ, but they are not the best on quality control, so check that first.
2) be sure that both drives either have the latest firmware, or at least are running the same firmware or there can be issues.

My be though is that one of the drives has bad sectors and will need to be RMA'd

 

[Dereck47]

I'm banging my head against the wall here. What do I need to do to get Windows installed?

Verify that your drives are connected to ports SATA6G_1 & SATA6G_2, not SATA6G_E1 & SATA6G_E2.

Verify that both drives are on firmware version 2.15; if not then update firmware.

Go into RAID BIOS (Ctrl-I), delete the RAID-0 array you previously created, save your BIOS settings, create a new RAID-0 array.

Pre-install the Intel RAID drivers.
Download the file named "f6flpy6488.zip" from this link: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=17412&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+Rapid+Storage+Technology&lang=eng#help
Unzip the file to a USB thumb drive.
Install Windows.
In the Windows setup window where you select the drive (or maybe the window before) you should see an option to install drivers; select it and install the drivers from the USB thumb drive.

 

[SamTheSammich]

I followed a suggestion from another thread to delete the array and recreate it, but with a smaller capacity. I did 400.0GB instead of the max 440.7GB and Windows installed just fine. Was I just lucky or is there a reason it worked?

 

[Dereck47]

I followed a suggestion from another thread to delete the array and recreate it, but with a smaller capacity. I did 400.0GB instead of the max 440.7GB and Windows installed just fine. Was I just lucky or is there a reason it worked?

I think it worked because you deleted & recreated the array, not because you reduced capacity.

 

[SamTheSammich]

I think it worked because you deleted & recreated the array, not because you reduced capacity.

I had actually deleted and recreated the array multiple times before that (each time with different block sizes)

I know SSDs are a bit weird at times, but I'm so lost as to how that worked.