Totally lost....Booting Windows 10 out of two SSD's (sm961) in RAID0

sram

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
1,699
Hi to all.

System Configuration is as follows:

i7 7700K @5.1 GHz on ASUS Maximus extreme IX formula
64 GB of ripjaws RAM
ASUS Strix 1080
Seasonic PRIME 850 Watts PSU
Thermaltake core X9 case

Now comes the disks. I have one 5TB WD drive for data. One 512GB samsung 850 Pro SSD. And one 512GB sm961 (The oem version of the samsung 960 pro ) where windows 10 pro is installed.

What I thought would be a very straightforward process turned out to be otherwise. The minute I decided to add another sm961 pro into my mobo to create a RAID0 volume and migrate my windows installation into it, my nightmare started. I haven't experienced this boot problems in my entire 20 years life of building PC's. Here is what I did:

I installed Macrium Reflect in my windows drive and created an image of the whole OS drive and saved it externally somewhere. I then went into the UEFI BIOS ( I must say I hate this one, used to be much easier), changed the SATA mode from AHCI to RAID and created my ~1TB RAID0 volume. I then booted into my bootable Macrium reflect drive, located my saved image and started looking for my raid volume. Unfortunately, Reflect didn't detect my raid array. I went through some trouble to get it to see it (loading Intel rapid storage driver) and then did what's expected. Load the image into my newly created ~ 1TB raid volume, the thing which I thought everything will be fine after. BUT NO, the PC couldn't boot. Nothing I do would fix it. I understand having multiple drives could confuse things but the boot order should take care of this in the BIOS.

One thing I should mention is the stupid way they have now to create the RAID volume. I don't see an option for it in the advanced PCH menu. Maybe only after I disabled CSM and rebooting I was able to see something. But, even then I can't find it sometimes, to recreate or delete the raid volume. The only way to access it is the EZ tunning wizard!!! What?! Why!?

Before in normal BIOS I remember, you can freely switch back and forth very easily. You will lose your data. So, if you don't have data to lose then it is fine. I must be lost in the EFI and UEFI BIOS, CSM, and secure boot stuff. I think the problem resides here somewhere.

I also don't seem to be able to really break the raid array because when I change the mode and change back to RAID, I can still see the volume created....why? Anybody has this mobo and tried to run RAID0 with his M.2 drives? Please say yes.

Anyways, instead of booting into windows I get all kinds of BSOD:

-restart or advanced options (F8 and the rest)
-inaccessible boot device
-the PC couldn't start
-Run startup repair or troubleshoot using a device

....etc . Nothing helps of course

Note:

-I was once able to use my bootable windows 10 drive and install a fresh windows installation into the raid0 after the loading the raid driver. This should work but I don't want to go through the countless configurations and installations I did, plus I don't seem to be able to do it anymore because the windows bootable drive doesn't see the RAID volume. I don't know why.

- I can also install windows into one of the other drives and boot to it, but that's not what I want of course. When I do this, I can see the raid volume. I also tried loading the image to it from withing windows but it still didn't work.

Any tips, hints, comments, instructions, guides will be greatly appreciated. I'm really sorry of the language because I'm little mad at myself and at the UEFI BIOS.

I can provide more info if you want. Thanks.
 
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As a side note: I just noticed that I lost my overclock(I rebooted like 40 times playing with), although the values are still the same in the UEFI BIOS! What gives? I can recover it, but why would such a thing happen? Even loading the saved profile didn't fix it. Stupid. Sorry, but I'm still mad:mad::mad::mad:
 
Unless I am wrong, last time I checked, you cannot migrate a single drive OS install to a Raid 0 array. The boot setup would be entirely different.
 
This can be done, however the free version of Macrium won't cut it in this case. You will need a PAID version of Macrium Reflect which supports recovering to new hardware. Then you will have the option to inject the new RAID drivers into your restored image, Macrium calls it ReDeploy and it works quite well in my experience. Very much worth the price of admission.

Good luck!
 
This can be done, however the free version of Macrium won't cut it in this case. You will need a PAID version of Macrium Reflect which supports recovering to new hardware. Then you will have the option to inject the new RAID drivers into your restored image, Macrium calls it ReDeploy and it works quite well in my experience. Very much worth the price of admission.

Good luck!

Good to know. That said, I would not bother with raid 0 anymore, you will not see any real performance difference, in my opinion.
 
Good to know. That said, I would not bother with raid 0 anymore, you will not see any real performance difference, in my opinion.
Considering you are already running an NVME SSD, I would agree. Unless you are really in need of the additional capacity on your boot volume, RAID-0 is just a risk/complication that probably isn't worth it.
 
This can be done, however the free version of Macrium won't cut it in this case. You will need a PAID version of Macrium Reflect which supports recovering to new hardware. Then you will have the option to inject the new RAID drivers into your restored image, Macrium calls it ReDeploy and it works quite well in my experience. Very much worth the price of admission.

Good luck!
Will try to do that next, but what's wrong with my BIOS?
 

Yes, exactly. I didn't follow this above guide but that's exactly how I did it, and like I told you I was able to install windows but NOT load an older image (installed on one SSD) and boot succesfully. I guess it just can't be done. I'll have to use this ReDeploy thingie. I actually tried to do it before but it still didn't work. I guess I have to create the image with the paid version of macrium reflect, which I'm ganna do when I get back home.

What's killing me is that I don't see this Intel (R) Rapid storage technology in the advanced menu. It should always be there, right? By the way my mobo is the formula ix, and not the maximus ix you linked to but I don't think there is a difference. I have the latest BIOS.
 
Yes, exactly. I didn't follow this above guide but that's exactly how I did it, and like I told you I was able to install windows but NOT load an older image (installed on one SSD) and boot succesfully. I guess it just can't be done. I'll have to use this ReDeploy thingie. I actually tried to do it before but it still didn't work. I guess I have to create the image with the paid version of macrium reflect, which I'm ganna do when I get back home.

What's killing me is that I don't see this Intel (R) Rapid storage technology in the advanced menu. It should always be there, right? By the way my mobo is the formula ix, and not the maximus ix you linked to but I don't think there is a difference. I have the latest BIOS.
Isn't the Formula just a sub-model of the Maximus lineup? It's this board right: https://www.asus.com/us/ROG-Republic-Of-Gamers/ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-FORMULA/

You are using UEFI boot and not CSM, correct? I am not sure if the RAID options will appear in the BIOS if CSM is enabled, but since you are booting from NVME you should be using UEFI anyways.

I believe if you are using CSM you will get a second Intel Rapid Storage option during boot as seen at step 8 from the following link: https://rog.asus.com/articles/maximus-motherboards/what-is-raid-setup-guide/ that is where you would setup RAID options using CSM. But as stated above, if your using NVME as your boot volume you should be using UEFI and wouldn't want to change to CSM anyways.

You wouldn't have to re-create the image as ReDeploy works after you recover the image to your new destination. I have actually used it when just moving a HDD/SDD from one system to another when they have different storage controllers. I have experienced minor issues w/ ReDeploy where I have had to run the ReDeploy process twice to get it to take. If the boot fails after the first run of ReDeploy reboot back into the Macrium Recovery and try ReDeploy a second time.
 
Well, I just gave up. It doesn't seem it will ever work even with the redeploy option of reflect. I also tried acronis true image. No go. Acronis had three types of bootable media. I miss the nice days of Norton ghost. I just went back and Re-installed windows from scratch and loaded the RAID driver at the very beginning. I'm in the process now of installing apps and doing configurations to my taste.

I know RAID0 isn't probably worth it, but for some benchmarking numbers it is nice!
 
Are you using the ICH10R raid built into your motherboard? I thought Windows contained the driver and the days of applying it manually on install were over?

Gawd, it's been a long time since I set up a raid 0.
 
Well, I just gave up. It doesn't seem it will ever work even with the redeploy option of reflect. I also tried acronis true image. No go. Acronis had three types of bootable media. I miss the nice days of Norton ghost. I just went back and Re-installed windows from scratch and loaded the RAID driver at the very beginning. I'm in the process now of installing apps and doing configurations to my taste.

I know RAID0 isn't probably worth it, but for some benchmarking numbers it is nice!

And if it gets corrupted it becomes your biggest pain in the ass. I would not raid0 a system drive.
 
And if it gets corrupted it becomes your biggest pain in the ass. I would not raid0 a system drive.
I have two veloci-raptors in Raid0 for a system drive ( windows 7) since 2007 I think with no problems. Those were mechanical drives of course.

I just need to figure out how to image this OS drive and load its image successfully into the array.

I think it is different if I install reflect and true image on tbe array.
 
I used to Raid 0 system drives on my Windows gamer all the time in the days of mechanical drives without issue, when SSD's were released I set up two in Raid 0 and for the first time ever encountered corruption on one drive losing everything - However I did have backups.

When I ditched one of the drives for a single SSD OS drive I couldn't notice a difference in performance, that was the last time I ever used Raid 0.
 
Seems like you should be able to take your working image, restore it to a third temporary drive, boot it up and then add the RAID drivers.
You may have to actually partition and format at least one volume on the RAID drive and make sure you can access it.

Once you have the RAID drivers in your desired config. make a new image (to USB drive or network) and then restore to the RAID array.
After you have the image, you can even boot up from the working temporary drive and do the restore to the RAID array from there.
I don't think you'd need any special boot disk that way.

The trick is that the image you are restoring must already have the RAID drivers installed.
I've done that many times with spinners but not SSD drives. Should still work though.

I agree with the other posts that RAID-0 is not really worth it on SSD drives. The big speed advantage of RAID-0 is minimizing the time
doing physical head/spinning platter data access. You don't have the latency of physical data access with SSD so gains are minimal.

Looks like you are just doing a fresh install to the RAID array, that works too. :)

.
 
Again, I agree RAID0 isn't worth the trouble with my case, but numbers look nice in benchmarks:). Here are some for your viewing pleasure:

IIrVF67.jpg


WvUJrnS.jpg


And my passmark rating:

iESkDjn.jpg
 
I never understood the point of benchmarking vs real world use value. Latter is infinitely more important.
 
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