ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Raid Issues

It took me forever that I had to load a USB stick with the raid drivers in order to install windows 7 on this board on a raid array (never had to do that before).

Here is another noob question...

Why won't it boot into my windows install without that same USB drive with the raid drivers on it? If i unplug the USB drive with the raid drivers I installed off of the ASUS driver CD it will not boot. Plug it back in and vioala it boots right to Windows 7 x64 after I restart the computer.

Anyone k ow what would be causing an issue like this. Do I have to like install the raid driers off the USB drive into windows? I installed them off the driver disk. Kinda confused on this one.

This will sound like a stupid question but let's get it out of the way. Are you sure Windows didn't get installed to the USB drive?

Haha yeah it was installed to two 128ssd drives I have in a raid array lol. The USB drive just has one 200mb partition on it and there was a utility on ASUSes driver disc to create raid drivers for the windows install.

If it were me I would try booting up and copy the driver to your system partition and go into device manager and change the driver pointing it to where you copied them to. That should pull them over.

You mean change the raid driver? I'll try that when I get home. When I set my first boot device to the raid volume in the bio it just gets a boot device now found generic "we can't find your startup disk" message.

I tried installing that raid driver, but it does the same thing. When the USB drive plugs in the BIOS automatically makes it the primary boot device, and it says "UEFI: OCZ ATV PMAP". OCZ is just the brand of usb drive, but what is a UEFI or a PMAP?

It boots no problem witha freshly formatted USB Drive in it...

Is there a "Legacy USB" setting in the BIOS? If so see if disabling it helps.

Are you sure you didn't enable ReadyBoost and that it is looking for the USB drive for that reason?

Mine installed windows fine to my 64GB M4 SSD and works fine. No problems here. Just redo everything from scratch.

You installed the RST RAID drivers to the USB stick, but not the Win 7 install

First of all during a FRESH install, Win7 will see what oprom is written in your bios and not allow any later RST driver to be loaded AT THIS TIME. It may allow something CLOSE, but not something next number set.
In other words if your mobo current bios screen says during RAID setup that your oprom is 10.5.1.0001, then you will prob be errored to install any RST higher such as 10.6.xxxx during Win 7 install.

I assume you are in RAID mode on the intel controller in bios, turned off all other storage controllers for safety, secure erased both SSD unless they were new, checked to make sure both dont have same serial, and pressed CNTRL + I, picked the 2 SSD and setup your array.

Now you need to put the RST drivers that are acceptable to your bios on a USB stick 2.0 formatted NTFS. You DO NOT insert the USB stick previous to the Win 7 Install boot, only AFTER you use Win 7 install to partition and format your O/S drive. (Do NOT forget to format!!!) Win 7 partitioning will only allow 3 primaries because 100MB system reserved no letter is considered a primary also. You can make the three primaries and shut down and restart and delete the reserved and make the fourth or do it first from DVD cmd promp and diskpart.
Then you insert USB stick, click add drivers, then go to driver folder\X64 and O.K. will light up and you click it and it will take a bit then give you successful message. THEN COMES THE IMPORTANT PART!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its all about FOCUS. You then have to REMOVE USB DRIVER STICK (not needed anymore) and click go back and RESET. Now you are back IN FOCUS to INSTALL 7, not to load driver. (And make sure correct partition is still highlighted)
And once again - later RST or RSTe or SCU F6/disk driver set shouldnt be later than OPROM showing on RAID screen

Note:
USB sticks are considered HDD in bios.. FAT32 format USB are considered UEFI (because efi.sys is FAT32), USB NTFS format are considered MBR (BIOS). DVD burners with a Win 7 X64 disk are seen as UEFI, with Win 7 X86 disk are considered MBR. If you want MBR with X64 Win 7 you will need to drag and drop the NON UEFI DVD ICON TO FIRST PLACE on EZ page (it may already be there)
Repeat: To create a non GPT drive, you must drag and drop the DVD Icon without UEFI strap to first place on EZ page. Placing an X64 Win 7 disk in a burner and booting to bios with it IN creates an additional icon - with UEFI strap. So you now have 2 DVD icon (same drive) that show the 2 DVD modes when you do a mouseover to see the identity of ea icon showing on EZ page. There are thousands of peeps making GPT drives without having a clue if or how it happened.

For your USB stick to be ready you need to go to Intel or station-drivers or ASUS site and download RST drivers appropriate for your bios - no later
You then EXTRACT IT (the .exe) with freeware 7Zip till the point you can put files on USB and get to DISK/X64 folder during driver load stage

I have the same motherboard but can't even get the Raid drivers to install at all. I have two Crucial M4 CT512M4SSD2CCA in a raid 0 array. I've put the drivers on a thumb drive that has been formatted to NTFS format from the motherboard DVD. During Windows 7 64 bit install it asks for the driver so i put the thumb drive in and it reconizes the driver but when i try to install it i get this error "The Itel C600 series chipset SATA RAID controller (c:\iaStorA.inf) device driver could not be installed. Contact your vender for an updated driver." I've tried to find an updated driver but no luck as of yet. Anyone have any ideas?

What bios are you showing on EZ page?
Next thing is what oprom vers is showing during post on the Intel controller screen (hit pause key once to hold it) on upper right
What RST driver vers was on the CD?
You did get to click on X64 folder, right?

Show me a screenshot of your USB with all folders open

cisco guy said:

What bios are you showing on EZ page?
Next thing is what oprom vers is showing during post on the Intel controller screen (hit pause key once to hold it) on upper right
What RST driver vers was on the CD?
You did get to click on X64 folder, right?

Show me a screenshot of your USB with all folders open

Click to expand...

I'll get this info this evening when i get home and let you know. I'm at work atm. Thanks for the reply.

cisco guy said:

What bios are you showing on EZ page?
Next thing is what oprom vers is showing during post on the Intel controller screen (hit pause key once to hold it) on upper right
What RST driver vers was on the CD?
You did get to click on X64 folder, right?

Show me a screenshot of your USB with all folders open

Click to expand...

I got a driver to install. I downloaded the same driver that was on the motherboard DVD from Asus and it worked. All I can figure is the one on the DVD was corrupt. Thanks for trying to help anyways.

Hi. I am new to the forum. I am having the same issue. I downloaded drivers from asus site and when i try to load them when it asks for the drivers before windows install i get "The Itel C600 series chipset SATA RAID controller (c:\iaStorA.inf) device driver could not be installed. Contact your vender for an updated driver."
I set the raid in bios then CTRL-I set it to Raid 0 with 128kb strip the drives are corsair gt 120gb
Can somebody help me.

I have a Rampage IV with 3930k

atkbond said:

Hi. I am new to the forum. I am having the same issue. I downloaded drivers from asus site and when i try to load them when it asks for the drivers before windows install i get "The Itel C600 series chipset SATA RAID controller (c:\iaStorA.inf) device driver could not be installed. Contact your vender for an updated driver."
I set the raid in bios then CTRL-I set it to Raid 0 with 128kb strip the drives are corsair gt 120gb
Can somebody help me.

I have a Rampage IV with 3930k

Click to expand...

What driver version are you using?? (can you provide me with the zip file name please)?...

-Raja

cisco guy said:

First of all during a FRESH install, Win7 will see what oprom is written in your bios and not allow any later RST driver to be loaded AT THIS TIME.
In other words if your mobo current bios screen says during RAID setup that your oprom is 10.5.1.0001, then you will not be allowed to install any RST higher than that version during Win 7 install.

I assume you are in RAID mode on the intel controller in bios, turned off all other storage controllers for safety, secure erased both SSD unless they were new, checked to make sure both dont have same serial, and pressed CNTRL + I, picked the 2 SSD and setup your array.

Now you need to put the RST drivers that are acceptable to your bios on a USB stick 2.0 formatted NTFS. You DO NOT insert the USB stick previous to the Win 7 Install boot, only AFTER you use Win 7 install to partition and format your O/S drive. (Do NOT forget to format!!!) Then you insert USB stick, click add drivers, then go to driver folder\X64 and O.K. will light up and you click it and it will take a bit then give you successful message. THEN COMES THE IMPORTANT PART!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its all about FOCUS. You then have to REMOVE USB DRIVER STICK and click go back and RESET. Now you are back IN FOCUS to INSTALL 7, not to load driver. This shit has been around since XP SP0.

Note:
USB sticks are considered HDD in bios.. FAT32 format USB are considered UEFI (efi.sys is FAT32 so its hidden), USB NTFS format are considered MBR (BIOS). DVD burners with a Win 7 X64 disk are seen as UEFI, with Win 7 X86 disk are considered MBR. If you want MBR with X64 Win 7 you will need to drag and drop the NON UEFI DVD ICON TO FIRST PLACE on EZ page (it may already be there)
Repeat: To create a non GPT drive, you must drag and drop the DVD Icon without UEFI strap to first place on EZ page. Placing an X64 Win 7 disk in a burner and booting to bios with it IN creates an additional icon - with UEFI strap. So you now have 2 HDD icon that show the 2 DVD modes when you do a mouseover to see the identity of ea icon showing on EZ page. There are thousands of peeps making GPT drives without having a clue if or how it happened.

For your USB stick to be ready you need to go to Intel or station-drivers or ASUS site and download RST drivers appropriate for your bios.
You then EXTRACT IT (the .exe) with freeware 7Zip till the point you can put files on USB and get to DISK/X64 folder during driver load stage

Click to expand...

Your the most helpful person i ever met, big props to you man!

First i tried the cd version which is 3.0.0.1112 that didnt work gave me the same error. then i went and downloaded the new version from asus 3.0.0.2003 that also didn't work same error. i know that its not the ssds because i tried the 32bit version and it worked just fine. but it limited my 32gb of ram just to 4gigs
also my option rom is 3.0.0.1184

follow up. Just called Asus and the guy is blaming intel for the bad 64 bit drivers. He told me i should try an older version of the drivers. any help with that. I told him i had the 3.0.0.1112 he said to try something older. Where can i find older drivers.
This is frustrating spend close to 3000 for the system and one driver is ruining it.

The drivers on the mobo DVD or the package avail on ASUS site contains several versions of the drivers. The one thing that always pisses me off about the ASUS mobo CD's are that each driver load option has both ASUSsetup.exe and setup.exe and then when you go one step down in folders, you are presented with the same two options again. So one is presented with the prob of which one to use - the overall ASUSsetup, the overall setup.exe or one of the subversions of ea as you go deeper. I have never seen any explain for what is the dif with each, and why are both offered anyway?

Having said that, ASUS/Intel has really outdid themself with complications to install the RST or RAID on the X79. You can have "regular" RST X86 X64 and RSTe X86 X64 and SCU X64 X86 (SCSI Control Unit) which needs the scsi minport from chipset install. Note theres also a "port disable" feature, which blocks "e" for normal RST



Here are the latest ENTERPRISE DRIVERS from Intel. (You may need earlier)
Note that they are 300.3020, not 2003
If you are trying later RST than what came with your mobo bios oprom, its better to update your bios to same timeframe - these are Dec 20. This is only important DURING INSTALL of Win 7!
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=20507









Are we having fun yet?
So you can install RSTe RAID or RST RAID or SCU RAID depending on drivers used IF your mobo supports it!
And you MUST turn off ASMedia and Marvel SATA controllers, put your O/S SSD on Intel ports #1 and #2 and set hotplug for ea and make sure you are using SATA 6G cables

Look, theres no reason for single enduser RAID anymore with 550/500 SSD's
If you RAID 2 of them and get 800 - 1000 in benchmarks you will never feel the dif.
So speed is no longer needed
As far as backup, you buy Casper Vers 7.0 hard bit for bit cloner and clone your first SSD to the second. And everything on first drive will now be on second drive, and I mean EVERYTHING - every last bit and byte.
First SSD blows/
Change boot order in bios and you are ready to go again
Not only that smart clone feature can do a clone with only new stuff added since last, and can also be scheduled.
It never fails and is idiot proof - its NOT an imager, no compression and you can surf the web while its running
http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/

As far as only 4GB RAM showing, I guess you know thats the limit X86

I think i am going to go on what you said. I also talked to a person who works for intel here in Oregon. I told him about the issue I am having with the SSD going RAID 0 he mentioned the same thing that I will not notice the speed and its better to have a clone with SSDs. He also said that the driver issue is common with the new controller for the x79 chipsets. IT's funny he also said that they had issues with Raid 0 for their testing phase on a new model of SSD. Thanks for all the help. I will save the info just in case down the road i want to try again and hopefully Intel will have the drivers that actually works without jumping thru all the hoops. Again Thanks to all and Specially Cisco Guy.

cisco guy said:

Having said that, ASUS/Intel has really outdid themself with complications to install the RST or RAID on the X79. You can have "regular" RST X86 X64 and RSTe X86 X64 and SCU X64 X86 (SCSI Control Unit) which needs the scsi minport from chipset install. Note theres also a "port disable" feature, which blocks "e" for normal RST

Are we having fun yet?
So you can install RSTe RAID or RST RAID or SCU RAID depending on drivers used IF your mobo supports it!
And you MUST turn off ASMedia and Marvel SATA controllers, put your SSD on Intel ports #1 and #2 and set hotplug for ea and make sure you are using SATA 6G cables

Look, theres no reason for single enduser RAID anymore with 550/500 SSD's
If you RAID 2 of them and get 800 - 1000 in benchmarks you will never feel the dif.
So speed is no longer needed

Click to expand...

Hmm, I didn't have any problems setting up my RAID on my board last weekend and Win7 64bit picked it up with no issues. I installed all the latest drivers from the Asus site and then just put my 2 SSDs in the Intel RAID ports. It picked up and configured the RAID 0 with no problem for me. I was a little bit surprised how easy it was honestly.

For me there are several reasons to still RAID SSDs. The first reason (for me) is that I have an Agility 3 (550MB read) and a Vertex Turbo (~330 MB read). When I raid them together I get 540MB read. The second reason and this is true even when having 2 550MB drives, is that it creates one complete drive rather than having 2 drives. This may not be an issue for some, but when you have a ton of Steam games you can easily run out of room on one SSD especially if it is 128GB or less. I have 2 256GB drives and I still ran out of space on the one drive for all my steam games.

As for performance, you are correct on that mark, I doubt you are going to see much of a difference for most applications getting 800MB read over 550MB read. But I do see a noticeable difference with 540MB over 330MB. So if you have some older SSD drives you want to include and get more total space, it can definitely help.

your sig shows a ME4

if you have a X79 need to know which one (R4E?)
and which controller showing in Dev Man and driver vers
(screenies would be super nice)
really curious as to which RAID/driver is installed
and which chipset pak you used after install?
X64 I assume?

I keep getting this error "error "The Itel C600 series chipset SATA RAID controller (c:\iaStorA.inf) device driver could not be installed. Contact your vender for an updated driver" as well and can't get any F6 RAID driver to install to save my life.

Running Asus Rampage IV Extreme with two ocz vertex3 drives in RAID1 on Win7 x64.

Everytime I pick the driver and try to install I get the error and can't proceed with the Win7 install.

I have verified that:
- both drives are in the correct Intel 6gb connectors with 6gb wiring
- tried using the old Intel drivers from the DVD and the new drivers. I see that I must use an older version of the Intel RST as my ROM is quite old. When I use the newer drivers they don't show up at all in the available drivers to choose from.
- RAID with Hot Plug enabled or disabled in the BIOS
- When trying to use a USB drive formatted NTFS with the drivers, Win7 install could not find the USB drive at all. Only thing that works is a USB floppy drive.

I have:
Intel RST ROM 3.0.0.1184
BIOS 1101 x64
irog-1 69
irog-2 42

been doing more research, finding more answers
> If RAM is not functioning perfect, will be an issue
Run 2 sticks D1 B1 1333 1.5V and at least check with memtest
>No overclock when installing RAID 0
>Mixed RAID's - ASMedia/Intel may not work
Disable all other RAIDED controllers during install
> Once RAID is created Win DVD on Intel port may not function during driver install. Place DVD in Marvel port and enable oprom. Yes, it does work in Marvel and boot - just pick it in F8
>Latest Intel RSTe F6 and install is 3.0.1.7016.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...92&keyword=rste&DownloadType=Drivers&lang=eng
On ASUS website 3002003, 3003020 was first update. 3003020 seems best to try
>Best to use USB 2.0 stick to install - rear I/O plate USB 2. In bios APM USB "auto" setting'
MUST FORMAT AS NTFS FOR MBR INSTALL!!
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038337351&postcount=5268
>Always secure erase any non new SSD first. Make sure you are not mixing modes - GPT MBR
>ALL SSD MUST have latest firmware
>SATA6 high quality clipped cables
>Your ROM is not old - they all have 1184
>Unplug other drives during install especially ones that were made with AHCI with O/S

There are two separate issues involved with this type post
>RAID drivers will not install during Win 7 install
>After install of Win 7 Windows will not boot
Usually peeps with 2 SSD's are installing Win 7 to new drives and X64
More often then not they will unkowingly create a GPT disk (Volume) instead of MBR (both NTFS)
Once Win 7 is installed, the Volume will not boot unless winbootmanger is set for that Volume in boot page and set to first boot before anything, including DVD drive

I had the exact same problems with the Intel Raid driver giving errors during installation. After a few frustrating hours I finally managed to get my P9X79 Deluxe to boot into RAID 0 by doing the following:

Simply do as you did before. Create a RAID array using the Control + F key on startup. Set it to RAID0 128kb strip etc.

Download the latest RSTe_V3002003_XPWin7 drivers from the ASUS website on a 2nd PC. Extract the archive and make a RAID disk with the supplied tool. Now pay attention: make a 32-BIT RAID disk first! The 32 bit driver WON'T give problems during Windows 7 install. Of course, we want 64 bit but do the 32 bit first.

Don't insert the USB stick yet, just start the installation from the Windows 7 DVD. When the installation asks for the driver, insert the USB stick and use the browse button to select te USB drive. Load the 32 bit driver and continue. You probably won't get an error now. Also, you WILL get to the "create partition on you HDD" part. This is the funny part!

When you get to this part during setup, remove your USB stick, insert it in your 2nd PC and format it. Now create a new RAID disk with the RAID tool but use 64-bit drivers. Insert the stick in your x79 PC again and from the create partition screen select the browse for driver option (I don't know what it's called in English, I use Dutch version) and load the 64-bit driver. The installation will warn you about incompatibility blablabla. Just agree and continue the installation. Now the PC will install without problems but there's more to come. Remove the DVD and reboot the PC.

When the installation is complete, you MAY get a black screen during startup stating your Windows 7 installation doesn't work because you changed your hardware. At this point, insert your Windows 7 DVD again, boot into the setup. Choose the repair option and repair the installation. It should be done in a few seconds. Remove DVD, reboot and there are you are. Finally booted in Windows 7 64 bit with RAID 0 support. At least, this worked for me. I hope it works for you guys too. Sigh...

Have worked out my strategy further now

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038370277&postcount=178

Hi Cisco Guy,

Yesterday, I did all the things you mention in your latest post. I used a Windows 7 DVD with integrated SP1 and the errors mentioned on this thread before kept coming, even when I erased the SSD's after each attempt and started over with older versions of the RSTe drivers. My Windows 7 DVD had SP1 integrated but I think it's a few months updates behind... maybe that's the issue here. Only when I used 32-bit drivers first and loaded up 64-bit drivers later did I manage to get Windows installed. The 64 bit drivers are simply bugged (i.m.o.), either that or it's an outdated Windows 7 DVD. I needed to repair the installation afterwards because of changed hardware. That must have happened when I changed the 32-bit driver to the 64-bit driver during installation but it's easy to fix that (just put in Windows 7 DVD and choose repair installation instead of normal installation).

My RAID 0 installation runs now after I performed the weird workaround I posted. Apparantly, you'll need both the 32 and 64 bit drivers to make RAID 0 possible with some P9X79 boards + SSD setups. Believe me, I've tried all other normal/correct ways of installing. I hope they fix this soon with good RSTe drivers. Maybe you can reproduce this error and find a better solution than mine in the meantime because it doesn't feel quite right that I had to install Windows 7 this way.

By the way, I use two Vertex 3 SSD's. Now I have just created a second RAID array in the Windows installation with 2 WD HDD's without problems.

Actually, the post I linked says I have abandoned using Win 7 FROM INSTALL DVD, especially from Intel ports. The post goes into making a bootable Win 7 USB stick with wintoflash and then placing the 3017016 drivers to the SAME stick in a separate folder.
Heres what my stick looks like


This bypasses all the KNOWN bugs in the X79 O/S install, especially in RAID. So your post is confusing to me.
Please note, this install nonsense is all over the web and it is NOT user error or newb unfamiliarity with setup. Its INTEL. Repeat - its INTEL!! The golden years when Intel was flawless and perfect are over. If you read the Relase Notes for ea of the three major RSTe versions you will see every single posters nightmare listed. These are documented bugs. I was shocked when I saw them all there right for everyone to see.

When X77 comes out RSTe will be gone and we will be back to RST and 11.0 - 11.5 drivers and things will settle down.

Heres just a few:

Sorry I didn't read your post good enough then. I thought you were still talking about installing from a Windows 7 DVD. It sucks to see Intel making things so hard for normal users.

Anyone try using nlite and slipstreaming the drivers yet? I may be up against this soon with either the Rampage or Pro.

Holy mother trying to get win 7 installed on r4e raid I am about to pull my hair out. This is just a stupid waste of time