HOW DO YOU BYPASS THE RAID POST?

[ravaneli]

This thing takes forever. I swear, with my triple RAID0 I load Windows faster than it takes to load the RAID post and menu after a start up.

Also, if I bought a RAID controller card and have a hardware RAID am I gona see the same RAID menu during booting again? Honestly, I am ready to by a raid card just to avoid that menu.

[freeagent]

sure, disable raid, and your raid menu will dissapear.

install a raid card, and you will still have it. only it will be a different one, since you are not useing your mainboards solution. pretty simple, i think :)

[baditude_df]

Yep, it's that simple.

[petteyg359]

There may be an option to remove or at least decrease the timeout on the menu, so that it only displays for as long as the RAID card actually takes to POST.

[Randyman...]

I know the Areca RAID cards will add 15-20 seconds to my POST :mad: . Frustrating, yes - worth the peace of mind - absolutely ;)

Any card with RAID will need to initialize the controller and the drives before it can "Hand-Off" to the BIOS. Intel's onboard RAID has a minimal delay IMO...

:cool:

[HDCHOPPER]

Lol welcome to the world of raid ;) I hated it so much I went out and got SSD's a single SSD beats the pants off a platter raid ..

[jgv115]

Don't think you can do it. the RAID bootrom is enabled when you enable RAID.

[Randyman...]

Lol welcome to the world of raid ;) I hated it so much I went out and got SSD's a single SSD beats the pants off a platter raid ..

Won't beat the pants off a 4.5TB RAID-6 Storage Array as SSD's just don't get that big ;)

I'd agree that SSD's make TONS more sense than a 2-Drive magnetic based RAID-0 just for OS duties, but for your primary Data storage, Magnetic Drives and RAID controllers will be kings for at least another few years until SSD's $/GB comes WWWWWAAAAAAAYYYYYYY down... 4.5TB of SSD would likely cost tens of thousands of dollars - and STILL require a RAID card to interface all of the drives :)

:cool:

[petteyg359]

SSD make more sense than any RAID array for OS duties, simply due to seek times, unless you can show me an OS that loads every in one big file where STR actually makes one bit of a difference. RAID may improve STR, but it ruins your random seek time. On Areca controllers, just hit ESC as soon as it POSTs to skip the menu delay. If you're not sitting at your computer right then, then it doesn't matter that it takes several extra seconds. If you are sitting there, you can darn well hit the ESC key.

[ravaneli]

SO nobody got nothing?

I know SSDs are better, but they are not big enough yet. And if it will be SSd, it will be Intel G2 or nothing! No compromise. They get filled up in a heartbeat by a 64b Vista and mTorrent.

[Randyman...]

On Areca controllers, just hit ESC as soon as it POSTs to skip the menu delay. If you're not sitting at your computer right then, then it doesn't matter that it takes several extra seconds. If you are sitting there, you can darn well hit the ESC key.

Hitting "Esc" does save 5 seconds once the card is fully initialized, but the PCIe initialization combined with the "Waiting for F/W" state and the initial "ping" it sends to each HD still adds a good 12-15 seconds by itself - and you can't bypass any of that.

SO nobody got nothing?

The RAID controller's BIOS generally would generally not allow bypassing initialization - similar to a MoBo's "Quick Boot" function (at least I've never seen this feature on a RAID card's BIOS). The RAID controller needs to be able to initialize the array and check for HD failures and file system errors before it can be safely read - the card's BIOS can't "Hand-Off" to the MoBo's BIOS until it completes its own initialization. I do wish I could shorten my Areca based systems' boot times, but I gave up on that hope. It can get highly annoying during overclocking, etc :(

I know SSDs are better, but they are not big enough yet. And if it will be SSd, it will be Intel G2 or nothing! No compromise. They get filled up in a heartbeat by a 64b Vista and mTorrent.

:thup:

:cool:

[Enablingwolf]

Don't think you can do it. the RAID bootrom is enabled when you enable RAID.


Good answer :D
Plus part of this bootROM is to save yer booty if it has to rebuild itself. Like any hardware during the bootstrap. It has to talk out loud before it has a say or is recognized.

If the delay is bothering you that much... You have to make up your mind if that delay is worth it./ You could simply not reboot as often and use sleep or hibernate. Otherwise there is not much we can do but offer options past that. Other than say buy other hardware or disable it.

Wish there was something else to offer man. But that screen has to happen if you use RAID. Even fakeRaid that uses the RAID controller.
I myself just use faster drives. Instead of being stuck on a specific controller. I keep all my important goodies on a SERVER. So data loss is not so bad for me. I should mention that server is set up for RAID5 and is lower power and never ever gets rebooted. Well someties it does. I just had a uptime of 160 days same as my firewall. I reboot all at once usually via ssh.