Dual Boot + RAID Controller

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi guys, I purchased a SI-PEX40057 PCI Express SATA card which should support RAID, says so on the box. I'm trying to setup dual boot. The expansion card is there for my DVD drive and x2 HDD that I want to put into RAID 1, so one port is left free. All my motherboard SATA ports are taken for the Windows install. Disk Management in Win 10 can see everything, device manager also sees the PCI Marvell controller card. When I go into BIOS however I see that EZ RAID doesn't detect any free drives, No PCIe SATA controllers/PCIe SSDs are presaent and if I go into all the drives connected to the computer, BIOS doesn't see the two drives attached to the SI-PEX40057. Any ideas on how to set things up? My motherboard is the Gigabyte Z370-HD3. I want the second OS to be Linux.

 

[EarthDog]

All my motherboard SATA ports are taken for the Windows install.

They are all in RAID or something? I'm confused by this...

Are tbe drives new? Did you initialize them?

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

I have 10 SATA ports, 6 on the motherboard, which are taken by HDDs used for the window install and 4 ports on the PCI SATA card, 3 of which are taken, x2 HDDs and one DVD rom. The drives connected to the SATA card are new.

 

[EarthDog]

That didn't answer either of the questions...but thank you for clarifying!

1. (unrelated to the problem) How are all of your drives on the SATA ports for Windows install? Is it a massive RAID array? 6 drives? Wow and cool!

2. Did you initialize the new drives connected to the SATA card?
2a. What do they look like in Computer Management -> Storage?

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

The windows machine has 2 SSDs in RAID 1 for the OS and 4 spinny drives in RAID 10 for all the data.

Not sure what you mean by initialising drives.

In Disk Management/Computer Management -> Storage all the drives are visible, the two RAIDs and the two new, currently separate drives each 1TB in size. I've tried formatting them, I tried deleting them from Disk Management and no matter what I do, Win10 can see the drives (formatted or not) but BIOS can't.

 

[EarthDog]

Ok, so TWO drives have the OS on it. The words you used made it sound like you had a massive 6 drive array!

Some drives when they come from the factory need to be initialized before you can format them. They will show up in computer management, but nowhere else.

Win10 can see the drives (formatted or not) but BIOS can't.

I just want to make sure I understand.... are you actually able to format the drives in windows?


Pictures are worth 1000 words. Will you please post a picture of disk management with these drives in them? You should be able to right click on the drive and select "initialize". Once that is done, you should then be able to format them, etc..... assuming this is the issue of course.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Yes, I'm able to format them in windows.

Here's the image.

 

[EarthDog]

Ok...cool. thanks for the image.

Does the card have its own RAID setup? Is that what you mean by EZ Raid?


Sorry, I'm not too familiar with these cards. I vaguely remember them having their own setup or something... not sure how to access that if you are not already.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

EZ RAID is my motherboard's BIOS's default feature.

I think you might be on to something. I just opened the box and found an instruction manual that talks about a separate utility for it. Will need to read the manual and poke around the disc that came with it.

 

[EarthDog]

Yeah... typically if you buy a RAID card, they have their own setup. That said, I am not sure if yours does or how to access it... typically in POST there will be an option when it loads....

Also, which port is the RAID card in? Does your board do any port sharing with PCIe lanes (Check in your manual)?

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

What do you know, reading instructions helped. I thought all the instructions had were driver installation instructions. Looks like there was more to it .

Yep, installed utility, it has a web based application to set up RAID. I did this, went into Disk Management and now it's recognised a new drive. It's asking me, "You must initialise a dsik before Logical Disk Manager can access it". Exactly what you said. Question is, do I init it as MBR or GPT? I want to be able to boot into Linux from it remmeber.

Sorry, didn't quite understand your questions. It's in a slow PCI slot (not the x16 in which the video card sits).

Will check manual about PCIe lane sharing, no idea what that is.

EDIT: NM, read about GPT and MBR, I need GPT since I use the UEFI BIOS.

 

[EarthDog]

If it's in an x1 slot, you shouldn't have any worries.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Everything appears to be working. Finally figured out how to get the card doing something other than connecting dust. Always feels good to overcome a challenge. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[EarthDog]

Happy to help! Glad it worked out!