SSD RAID 0 setup trouble

[Au_equus]

I recently purchased an additional samsung 830 256gb ssd in hopes of doubling the capacity and speed of my system drive.

Here's the story:
The original system ssd was backed up using disk copy (on a 2 TB drive) and a system image was created on another drive (1TB). Once the second SSD was added, the PCH configuration was changed from ACHI to RAID. After reboot, I was able to enter the IRST RAID configuration screen and set a 128kb stripe size (RAID 0). Disk copy did not work in recopying onto the RAID array, neither did an OS repair from the system image. I switched RAID back to ACHI and some how I was still able to boot to the OS as if nothing happened.

After reenabling RAID and doing a fresh install, my motherboard (ASUS WS Z77) was having trouble loading, but once it got to the windows screen, a quick BSOD, a reboot and that screen telling me that the OS is bad and a repair is needed. The attempt at repair, via the windows 7 installation disk, did not work.

I proceeded to take out the SSDs, format them (NFTS/64kb) and plug them back in. Now, after numerous reboots and banging CRTL-I on my keyboard I can't get into IRST's RAID configuration screen.
help?

au_equus

 

[Pinhedd]

The low level operations of SSDs are much different than their platter based counterparts. Thus, there are two things that need to be kept in mind.

1. Putting SSDs in RAID is generally not recommended. The performance of the Samsung 830 is very high on its own, putting it into RAID with another 830 will not translate to an increase in real world performance as it would with a platter drive. TRIM will only work on an Intel 7 series motherboard and only if the newest RST drivers are used.

2. Partitions and data need to be carefully lined up by the SSD controller. Some partitioning software can successfully translate HDD partitions to SSDs, and from one SSD to another but it is almost always recommended to create a new partition with a new OS install and copy the files via the file system instead which allows the OS and port drivers to do the work that they were written for.

3. Asus is notorious for fixing firmware up after release. Make sure that your board is at the latest EFI firmware release that Asus has made available.

 

[Au_equus]

The first system 830 was getting full and the performance seemed to downgrade. I deleted redundant files and moved some of the unnecessary programs to the larger drives. the 2nd 830 was purchased on sale and thought this was a good chance to try raid 0 while doubling the system volume. One of the first things I did prior to this mess was updating the EFI BIOS (from 0705 to 3105).
Why can't I access the RST RAID configuration screen?
Why is the RST configuration screen currently inaccessible?

 

[Pinhedd]

The first system 830 was getting full and the performance seemed to downgrade. I deleted redundant files and moved some of the unnecessary programs to the larger drives. the 2nd 830 was purchased on sale and thought this was a good chance to try raid 0 while doubling the system volume. One of the first things I did prior to this mess was updating the EFI BIOS (from 0705 to 3105).
Why can't I access the RST RAID configuration screen?
Why is the RST configuration screen currently inaccessible?

Make sure that both of the drives are connected to the Intel controller ports and not an add-in controller from another company like ASMedia, Marvell, LSI, or JMicron. Most of these controllers don't have support for ATAPI, or full support for AHCI, which will cause them to bug out. They should only be used for platter hard drives and nothing else. The add in ports are the bottom most ports.

I had a similar problem on my Rampage IV Extreme. If I connected an optical disk to the ASMedia SATA-III ports it would stomp the Intel RSTe (Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise) OPROM and render those drives unbootable and the configuration screen inaccessible. The IRST/IRSTe configuration screen can only be accessed if the Intel storage controller is set to RAID mode, this setting gets reset whenever the firmware is updated so you may have to reset it.