Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Raid setup

zooankski · 18 Aug 2011 at 22:24

i am trying to figure out which SATA ports i need and the relevent settings to get a raid mirror working with my new board.
Currently i have the OS on my SSD and would prefer it to remain that way, all i then require is a mirror array for my photos etc but can not seem to figure it out in the bios (or physical sata connectons) as boot options are not available when raid is selected-almost as if you can only make the array bootable? also i get a BSOD if i enable raid.
I am also unsure if i will need to re install the OS and install a raid driver (WIN 7 64), i assume i can put the driver on a usb stick if i do?
Can anyone assist?
Other than that this board is the dogs danglies

stulid · 18 Aug 2011 at 22:45

Have a look at page 13 of the manual, this shows which ports "are pairs" i.e connected to the same controller.

For example the top two SATA3.0 ports are connected to the Marvel control chip.

The two SATA3.0 ports under this are controlled by the Intel chip.

So you want to make sure the drives you are trying to RAID are on the same chip.

The manual at page 71, explains to have the bootable devices on the Intel controller, so have your two drives that you want set to RAID on the Marvel controller.

Then enter the BIOS and Storage options and set the Marvel controller to AHCI.

Then it should be a case of installing the driver/software and setting up the RAID array as you want it.

zooankski · 18 Aug 2011 at 23:33

i will give it a go-cheers! i found the manual a little un clear if i am honest!

zooankski · 19 Aug 2011 at 18:27

stulid said:
Then it should be a case of installing the driver/software and setting up the RAID array as you want it.

So am i right in thinking the raid array is set up from within windows? which software/driver should i be installing????? OR if i connect drives to the Marvell ports do i get another display during boot enabling me to set up raid?

stulid · 19 Aug 2011 at 18:33

So you have connected both drives to the same control chip SATA ports?

Enabled AHCI/RAID for this chip?

Then I believe you can use the Intel rapid storage software to create the array.

There more here - http://europe.asrock.com/downloadsite/manual/raid/Z68 Extreme4/English.pdf

And the Intel software guide - http://europe.asrock.com/downloadsite/manual/raid/Z68 Extreme4/IntelRapidStorage/English.pdf

Danger Phoenix · 9 Nov 2011 at 09:17

I am just setting this up. I have set the top two ports to AHCI but only have a DVD-RW connected to them. The two remaining 6GB/s ports are used by my boot SSD and 1TB drive. The 4 x 3GB/s ports have 4 x 3TB drives which I want to set up in RAID5 so I have set the Intel controller to RAID.

In the Intel Rapid software I set up these 4 drives in RAID5 and started initializing them... currently its doing about 1% every 75 minutes... I can't wait 5 days for this