help me please, raid 0 just wont work

[cravinmild]

I have picked up a second intel x25-M 80g ssd and plan to raid 0 the two. I asked questions in forums, watched utube vids, read up on all the parts and process but i can not get Raid 0 to work. I will post my specs at the bottom of the page.

My first intel 80g ssd has been in use as a os boot drive for about 4 months. The other intel 80g drive is brand new, just formatted and completely empty. All my drives are seen by the windows and i have access to all drives. All drives are in good working conditon other than a pos 250g that i have been packing around with me for several years, its got over 25000 hours and shows as failing but still works well.
My sata ports are filled as listed:
sata0 old 80g ssd
sata1 new 80g ssd
sata2 250g pos failing drive
sata3 40g ssd
sata4 wd green 1tb 6gb/s model
sata5,6,7 empty

All drives are seen in post and bios. When i set the sata 0-1 to raid and re-start both my drives disappear but i can still move onto raid utility and can see my only to spinner drives but no ssds.

here are my specs
Cpu: AMD 1055T @ 3.92 with Corsair H70 watercooler-max oc so far-4050 (thanks Lordred)
Ram: Gskill Ripjaws F3 CL9 1600 4x2GB @ 1333 8 8 8 23 t1 cooled with GSkill Turbulance Ram Cooler
Mobo: Gigabyte 890gpa-ud3h Rev.2
PSU: Coolmaster GX 750W Bronze 60amp single rail
Storage: Intel X-25v 40Gb ssd + Intel X25-M 80 gig ssd (os boot) + WD 1tb green
Sound: Creative SB x-fi Fatal1ty Pro
Network: Bigfoot Killer 2100 Network Card (they do so work)
Graphics: Zotac 560 ti OC Edition (1050/20xx/2200 max oc)
PhysX: NOT IN USE
Input: G-15 keyboard + Microsoft Sidewinder X8 gaming mouse
Monitor: Samsung 2233rz 3D ready 120hz
Speakers: Logitech X-530 5.1 surround sound
OS: Windows 7 64 home prem
Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Special Edition
* Nvidia 3D Vision
* Psyko Audio 3d 5.1 surround sound gaming headphones
* Razer Vespula mouse pad (best pad ever)
* Sickelflow Kaze Master Pro-6 fan controller with temp sensors- 15 fans spinning
* 2x cold cathode UV Tubes 12"

 

[Psykoikonov]

Does the motherboard have the latest bios (I checked the site and latest version is FF)?

Next I would try disconnecting all drives except the 2 Intel SSD's. Then set the motherboard bios to AHCI mode save and exit. Upon restart check in bios to see if the 2 drives are detected.

Then change to RAID mode in bios, restart and again check to see if they are detected. If so I would secure erase the drives (option in the Raid menu (ctrl+f), I think it's under view drive assignments) then create the array. After reboot check to see if the array is there, it should be, if not report back with more info please.

 

[Automata]

What color SATA connectors are the SSD drives plugged into on the motherboard? They should be in the blue, from what I can tell.

 

[cravinmild]

I have not updated the bios beyond what was shipped with the board. I will update the bios. I will unplug the other drives befor attempting again. Im unfamilar with secure erase other than seeing it mentioned in other threads but assume it means whip the drive........at which point theres no going back if i understand you correctly.

The two ssds are in blue sata ports, i assumed was running off the intel controller, the last two sata ports (sata6-7) are white. From what i have read those two white ones are controlled by gigabyte raid controller. I assume no drivers are needed at the os install and others have confirmed that they have not needed to instal drivers at that point either. I have read that people need to at one point but those post go back to late 09 and i assume that it was needed then. Please correct me if i am wrong and link me to a page i can dl from as i have not been able to find any in my searches.

thanks for the help btw

 

[Psykoikonov]

When you put them in Raid there is no going back, the drives will be have to wiped at that point. The secure erase is too make sure the SSD's are not in a "dirty state".

You will need driver's, if you want to use the latest drivers then go to http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/downloads.aspx under Motherboard/Integrated Video Drivers then pick your OS and under optional drivers select SB8xx RAID Driver.

Now you need to extract the actual drivers required, you can either pretend install them for extraction or use something like 7zip, either way the files you want will be in ...\$_OUTDIR\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SB8xx\RAID_svr either the folder LH or LH64A depending on 32 or 64 bit windows, copy those files to a USB (formatted fat32) or floppy (point it to the *.inf file to recognize the array when you need to select the install location).

Then after you install windows you can install the whole package and raidxpert to turn on NCQ. Only after that would I reconnect the other drives.

One last thing, there are no Intel controllers on an AMD board .

 

[cravinmild]

ive dl-ed the ff bios update and the raid controller update. The raid controller drivers are unzipped when they dl-ed, only able to instal at this point and not able to access the individual files BUT not zipped. Shows as application and ready for instal......so im not sure as to how to seporate the 64bit file needed out of the dl at this point, i assume i just instal the whole thing at the point mentioned after os instal and befor hooking up my other drives.

The bios update seems to be tricky as i dont have a fat32 flash drive with 80mb on it, my flashdrives are all the newest standard NFTS...or whatever. I do have a old 300gb usb hdd that is fat32 but no matter what i try the qflash sees the file but when i click on it it says no files found. Ive tried putting it in the root directory and inside a folder but nither will instal. I may have to go out and buy a fat32 flashdrive with at least 100mb of room.


I thought this was more plug and play style but seems there is alot of effort to get this working, good thing im bullheaded and cant let this go now that ive started.

Thanks for the help thus far, its really helping me. Hope the speed boost is worth the effort..........

 

[Psykoikonov]

ive dl-ed the ff bios update and the raid controller update. The raid controller drivers are unzipped when they dl-ed, only able to instal at this point and not able to access the individual files BUT not zipped. Shows as application and ready for instal......so im not sure as to how to seporate the 64bit file needed out of the dl at this point, i assume i just instal the whole thing at the point mentioned after os instal and befor hooking up my other drives.

The file downloaded will most likely be called 11-3_win7_32-64_raid.exe (for Win7) which is extractable either by simply running it which will extract the files to a folder (then cancel out of the installation and navigate to the folder it extracted) or using 7zip/winrar etc to extract it (the file is an archive with the extractor built in). Without these drivers you will not be able to install windows to the Raid as windows does not include native drivers for Riad on AMD SB850.

The bios update seems to be tricky as i dont have a fat32 flash drive with 80mb on it, my flashdrives are all the newest standard NFTS...or whatever. I do have a old 300gb usb hdd that is fat32 but no matter what i try the qflash sees the file but when i click on it it says no files found. Ive tried putting it in the root directory and inside a folder but nither will instal. I may have to go out and buy a fat32 flashdrive with at least 100mb of room.

A quick format (right mouse click->format) on the USB stick to fat32 will work and again after back to ntfs if need be.

I thought this was more plug and play style but seems there is alot of effort to get this working, good thing im bullheaded and cant let this go now that ive started.

Thanks for the help thus far, its really helping me. Hope the speed boost is worth the effort..........

Plug and play Raid 0 SSD's is not quite there yet, perhaps one day. The speed boost noticed will depend what you use the computer for.

 

[cravinmild]

Wow, i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The newest bios did the trick to seeing all my drives in the raid utility. I am now following the instructions to the drivers in the ati catalist dl. I only installed far enough to access the nessasary files. Following your instructions to the letter got me to both LH, LH64A files but i have a third folder called W764A. Have moved over both files to a fat32 pen (formated as per your instructons) and i hope that its the contents of the LH64A as those are the items i will use when installing the os. I will google quickly the contents of the other w764a just theres no surpises lol. SO far so good, knock on wood.

 

[Psykoikonov]

After the intial install, once on the desktop, I would go ahead and install the whole Raid driver package. The files in those folders are just the basic drivers so Windows 7 can communicate with the RAID controller.

 

[cravinmild]

All finnished. Im up and running, seems i hit every snag there was and guessed wrong every chance i got lol. Thanks for all the help Psykoikonov, could not have done it without all your help

In the end it took updating the bios, extracting drivers from the raid program to instal at win7 os load, lots of reading.....and a bit of button slapping

here is my speeds in raid 0 with my two intel ssds


IMG_0063 by cravinmild, on Flickr

Not too shabby, much better than a single ssd. I say mission accomplished.

 

[Psykoikonov]

Looks good, nice speed and good to see you got it working. Below is what a couple Intel X-25V 40GB look like in Raid 0 on AMD SB850 (it only shows 61GB because I left 19GB unallocated for over provisioning which helps the drives clean themselves from the "dirty state"). One thing, inside that same package there is a utility called RaidXpert, install that and run it and enable NCQ for both drives (all drives even better). It should bring the speed up a bit more. Once or twice a month (or after you do alot of writes and deletes) it is a good idea to let the system sleep in S1 mode (which is set in the motherboard bios) or leave the computer idle in the bios, this allows the drives "garbage collection" to restore the drives speed.