Confused about RAID mode for non-bootable drives (and cache drives)

matsquatch · 7 Aug 2013 at 20:27

Sorry if this appears to be a bit of a ramble, but I'm hoping someone can help me out.

Over a while, I've collected a few different SSDs and with a new i5 build, I've been trying to figure out how to use them.

So I've got 1 x 256gb Samsung 840 Pro, that I want to use for my boot (win 8) drive, 2 x 256gb Crucial M4's, that I want to combine to use for my Steam folder, a 64gb M4 that I have kicking about (that I figured would be good for a cache drive) and a WD Green 2TB for everything else. Board I'm using is an ASRock Extreme6.

Disks are set to AHCI, currently the 2 256 M4's are paired up using Win 8 storage spaces - I can't help but think that it's not the optimal route.

When I came to look at setting up the 64gb into a cache drive, I read that the board needs setting to RAID, not AHCI. But I only have a single boot drive. Obviously if I change from AHCI to RAID, I get an immediate boot error. In IRST, there's no option for setting up RAID, and there's also no IRST option in the BIOS - I assume that this is because I don't have RAID enabled in said BIOS.

So (sorry, I said it was rambling) - what do I do? Unplug the 64gb and put it back in the drawer and leave the 2 256's in "storage space" config. or is there a way to set things up properly, even if it needs a rebuild.

TLDR - only got a single boot drive, how do I enable RAID for caching disk and RAID0 data drives?

Steampunk · 7 Aug 2013 at 21:10

There's no point using a SSD to cache a SSD. Just boot off the SSD and you'll be fine.

You could use the 64GB SSD as a cache drive for the WD Green.

What you really need to do is run everything under Intel RST. To do this all your drives must be running under RAID in the BIOS. Then the Intel RST interface will enable you to set up all the drives the way you want. Note all the drives have to be running through the onboard Intel SATA interface so you need enough ports.

You need to flip the settings on the boot drive from AHCI to RAID. There are utilities around to do that if you Google. Then you will be able to boot under RAID, and set up all your other disks.

(Your alternatives are to do some cable switching if you have two separate SATA controllers, or reinstall your boot drive from scratch with the BIOS set to RAID.)

Once you're running the boot drive under RAID, all your other SATA devices should show up, and in the RST interface it's easy to say which two SSD are an array, and which SSD should cache the HDD.

wazza300 · 7 Aug 2013 at 21:23

You can set to raid in BIOS setup a raid 0 array for the two wd drives then install windows on them,once done add in the ssd and install Intel rapid storage drivers in windows,then cache your raid 0 array from within the Intel storage driver console in windows

matsquatch · 7 Aug 2013 at 21:47

Steampunk said:
There's no point using a SSD to cache a SSD. Just boot off the SSD and you'll be fine.

You could use the 64GB SSD as a cache drive for the WD Green.

What you really need to do is run everything under Intel RST. To do this all your drives must be running under RAID in the BIOS. Then the Intel RST interface will enable you to set up all the drives the way you want. Note all the drives have to be running through the onboard Intel SATA interface so you need enough ports.

You need to flip the settings on the boot drive from AHCI to RAID. There are utilities around to do that if you Google. Then you will be able to boot under RAID, and set up all your other disks.

(Your alternatives are to do some cable switching if you have two separate SATA controllers, or reinstall your boot drive from scratch with the BIOS set to RAID.)

Once you're running the boot drive under RAID, all your other SATA devices should show up, and in the RST interface it's easy to say which two SSD are an array, and which SSD should cache the HDD.

Nice one, that sounds like it's the missing step - I've 6 SATA devices at the min, including the Blu-ray drive, they're all off the Intel controller, haven't got any off the other 4 ports. Will do a system restore point, and back up my steam folder, and give it a go

Steampunk · 7 Aug 2013 at 22:20

You should probably use the latest RST which is 12.7.1.1000 WHQL

matsquatch · 8 Aug 2013 at 10:33

How come they aren't on the intel site? The "latest" ones which I downloaded are 12.5.0.1066.

But anyway, I've had partial success - enabled safe mode in msconfig, rebooted and changed the bios to RAID, and saved and rebooted. Booted into safe mode ok, back into msconfig and remove safe mode. Rebooted again, and into windows.

Copied my steam folder over to my WD drive, broke up the storage space, then used RST to create the RAID partition. Initialised the disk, formatted and have just copied everything back.

The only bit I'm struggling with is that I don't have an "accelerate" tab in IRST. I have a "performance" tab, but no sign of a way to use the 64gb as a cache drive.

Will have a read into it, but if that's the only bit I can't get working, I won't be too disappointed.

Learnt something new, so pleased with that, thanks for the suggestions!

wazza300 · 8 Aug 2013 at 11:02

try reinstalling the rst drivers a few times,it takes a few attempts to get the acceleration tab to show up

Steampunk · 8 Aug 2013 at 11:45

matsquatch said:
How come they aren't on the intel site? The "latest" ones which I downloaded are 12.5.0.1066.

There's always something clunky about the Intel site. If I filter for Windows 7 64bit, it offers me really old drivers.

I usually get updates from Station-drivers.com - I'd suggest staying away from the betas, but get the latest WHQL, which is the 12.7.1.1000 WHQL and is working well on my new i7 sytem. It does TRIM, accelerate, etc.

matsquatch · 8 Aug 2013 at 13:28

Station-drivers.com seems to be down, but found them elsewhere and have installed ok - still no acceleration tab, and I've installed (repaired) 4 times now - the acceleration option is greyed out in the intel bios (ctrl+I) too.

I'll keep looking into it, but it's not the end of the world to me - I've not really anything on the HDD that needs accelerating, it was just to use the drive for something!

One last thing I've noticed - the stripe has been set to 16k - I'd read that the best size for RAID0 is 128k - is it worth trashing it and resetting to 128, or is it neither here nor there?

Steampunk · 8 Aug 2013 at 13:37

I just left mine at default.

You might want to check to see if there is anything in your BIOS that needs setting to allow you to use acceleration. According to the IRST help pages, you must have

■ Processor: Intel® Core™ i3, Intel® Core™ i5, Intel® Core™ i7, or Intel® Xeon® processor family
■ Operating system: Refer to System Requirements for a list of the supported operating systems.
■ Chipset/Platform Controller Hub:
■ Intel® 8 Series and Intel® C220 Series Chipset Family SATA RAID Controller SKUs:
Mobile: Intel® QM87 and HM87 Express Chipsets
Desktop: Intel® Q87, Z87, and H87 Express Chipsets
Workstation: Intel® C220 Express Chipset
■ Intel® 7 Series Chipset and Intel® C216 Chipset SATA RAID Controller SKUs:
Mobile: Intel® QM77, HM77, QS77, and UM77 Express Chipsets
Desktop: Intel® Q77, Z77, and H77 Express Chipsets
Workstation: Intel® C216 Express Chipset
■ Intel® 6 Series Chipset SATA RAID Controller SKUs:
Mobile: Intel® QM67 and HM67 Express Chipsets
Desktop: Intel® Z68 Express Chipset
■ BIOS: RAID-Ready system and Accelerate feature bit is set.
■ A solid-state drive with a minimum capacity of 18.6 GB present at boot time and connected to an internal configured SATA port.

■ A hard disk or RAID volume (array members must all be hard disks) is eligible for acceleration.
■ No recovery volume is present.

So I would make sure you have the accelleration bit set in your BIOS, and make sure you have no partitions on your 64 GB SSD - Intel RST will make the partition when you set it up.

matsquatch · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:57

I've been looking this afternoon, and can't see anything obvious in the BIOS - the board instructions suggests that when you install the RST, if there's a suitable SSD and a hard drive, there'll be a link in the status tab to set up acceleration, but still no joy. I might swap the sata ports over, but other than that, it's low on the priority list.

Thanks for all the tips so far, appreciate the help