Help setting up RAID1 with Z77 Sabertooth

Twirlywoos · 17 Aug 2012 at 13:28

I have a 256Gb Samsung 830 SSD which is my boot drive connected to the Brown 6Gb/s Intel Rapid Storage Technology

I have 2X2TB Hitatchi Data Drives which are connected to the Grey/White 6Gb/s ASMedia.

I want the Hitatchi drives in RAID 1. But how do I enable RAID for ASMedia? Will RAID 1 only work with the Intel Rapid Storage connection? If that is the case will connecting the SSD to ASMedia affect the performance of my SSD?

It's just that my manual says that connecting to the Grey/White port is recommended for Data drives, but then it doesn't explain how to create RAID from it.

Any help would be appreciated as I'm in a pickle.

wazza300 · 17 Aug 2012 at 13:31

wouldnt the intel sata2 ports be better/easier for your hdd's?

Twirlywoos · 17 Aug 2012 at 13:40

wazza300 said:
wouldnt the intel sata2 ports be better/easier for your hdd's?

Dunno buddy. Looking at the manual again it shows the Black Intel ports as 3.0Gb/s. I just want to get the best bandwith/performance to my data drives and I would have thought connecting to that connector would defeat the object since the data drives are SATA 6Gb/s

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-077-HI&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=

wazza300 · 17 Aug 2012 at 13:43

youll hardly max the bandwidth of sata2 ports with hdd's,even in raid

intel ports are considered the best performing and reliable,you can test on the asmedia ports but ive no idea on how to access the raid console,might be ctrl and a or ctrl and m

i know its ctrl and i for intel ports

Surveyor · 17 Aug 2012 at 13:59

RAID isn't supported with the ASMedia ports so you'll have to use Intel.

Twirlywoos · 17 Aug 2012 at 16:50

I connected the data drives to the 3GB/s intel ports and have set up RAID 1 after changing from AHCI to RAID in Bios. But now when I restart my mahcine, it gets as far as the Windows 7 loading screen and then bsod's and restarts. It does this in a loop and there is no way to get out of it. Any ideas?

wazza300 · 17 Aug 2012 at 16:55

i think you have to do a clean install with ports set to raid first before installing windows

Twirlywoos · 17 Aug 2012 at 17:01

wazza300 said:
i think you have to do a clean install with ports set to raid first before installing windows

you mean install windows after setting up raid? But yeh I'm re-installing Windows as we 'speak'. It's a shame ASMedia don't support Raid. Asus should just use Intel SATA ports, as a newb I find it strange why Asus would use an ASMedia controller aswell - it must be a cost thing.

wazza300 · 17 Aug 2012 at 17:02

idk much about raid,ive never used it tbh,but yeah its a shame,could be chipset limitation idk,it can only handle so much

rpstewart · 17 Aug 2012 at 18:02

majnu said:
I connected the data drives to the 3GB/s intel ports and have set up RAID 1 after changing from AHCI to RAID in Bios. But now when I restart my mahcine, it gets as far as the Windows 7 loading screen and then bsod's and restarts. It does this in a loop and there is no way to get out of it. Any ideas?

As suggested a clean install will fix the issue but there are workarounds

1) There's a registry hack which should let you change the drivers, have a search in this forum for it.

2) This *should* work and might be easier
a) Shutdown and move the SSD onto one of the ASMedia ports
b) Reboot and make sure everything's working (if not put the SSD back and go with option 1)
c) Reboot again, this time changing the BIOS to RAID mode
d) Load the RAID drivers when Windows detects the change in hardware
e) Reboot as required
f) Shutdown and move the SSD back to the Intel ports.

Twirlywoos · 17 Aug 2012 at 20:01

I've already installed Windows now but thanks amyway.

But if I want to replace my drive in case one gets faulty. Is it a simple case of swopping it for a new one and the RAID will write the existing data to the new drive?