Extreme6 and raid problems

[cebrown5]

Hello,
Running win7, 64bit and having a problem trying to configure raid. I have 4 SATA drives installed at SATA3_0, SATA3_1, SATA3_A1 and SATA3_A2.
It shows the drives in the bios but when I restart with the SATA mode in raid the A1 and A2 drives don't show up in the create raid array window and if I try to boot into windows I will get a blue screen and restart. I wanted to make the drives on A1 and A2 into a raid 1 array after I had installed windows.

 

[alexoiu]

The A1 and A2 are Asmedia, that's why.
And from the board's specs, no RAID on Asmedia,
Connect all of them to the Intel SATA ports for RAID.
For Windows, when installing in RAID mode, load the RAID driver during Windows install.

 

[cebrown5]

What I want is to have 2 of the SATA drives installed as non raid for windows and then 2 drives as a raid 1 array for my pictures. Can I do this with win7 already installed?

 

[alexoiu]

Yes, you have to switch to RAID: Connect the non RAID drives to the Intel SATA 3 ports and the RAID ones to the Intel SATA 2.
Install the Intel SATA driver, then run this fix from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 (it will modify the registry settings for msahci, iastor and iastorv for enabling the driver).
Restart and set SATA to RAID in BIOS. Then Ctrl+I to configure the RAID array. Leave two of the HDDs (including the one with Windows) as non-RAID.

 

[Zjenep]

RAID1 can be useful for OS and for crucial databases. For pictures I would just use a normal drive, copy to an external drive frequently, and store that somewhere else.

In case of fire or theft that will offer better protection than a RAID1 array.

 

[cebrown5]

Thanks for the help, now up and running. I have one more question if anyone has any experience with this board, when I boot it gets to A2 on the debug light and then stalls there for 10 seconds or more before it continues to boot into windows. According to the manual A2 is IDE Detect. If that is just the nature of this board I can live with it but it is aggravating.

 

[noidea_77]

Disabling the ASMedia controller in bios may help.

 

[cebrown5]

Starting to dislike this board, had the raid array configured and working and then when I restarted one of the ports a drive was on disappeared. Restarted again and it was there and had to rebuild array. Two starts later had the very same thing happen again, anyone have any ideas? My first board was a DOA, I would hate to send it back again.

 

[alexoiu]

How have you connected the drives?

 

[cebrown5]

yes, all connected and will change back and forth every time I reboot.
In the Intel rapid storage app it will list that drive as no drive there, port unknown and port location as unknown. Boot it again and the drive will show.
















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[alexoiu]

I mean what SATA ports have you used for connecting the RAID drives and what SATA ports for the non RAID ones?
What you can also try is installing the Asmedia SATA driver and move the Windows HDD to one of the Asmedia SATA ports. See if still the same.