RAID error when not using RAID.

Gigamite · 29 Oct 2022 at 09:37

This one really has me scratching my head.
I have a single WD Black SN850X installed on my ROG STRIX Z690-A GAMING WIFI D4 motherboard running windows 11 and I keep getting this error.
The drive is installed in the top M2 slot that uses the CPU.

Error: (10/28/2022 05:17:12 PM) (Source: stornvme) (EventID: 11) (User: )
Description: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort3.

I'm usually pretty good at fixing things with my computer but this one has me baffled. Any advice would be most welcome.

Snapshot · 29 Oct 2022 at 20:10

For SATA drives we get the choice of setting them as AHCI or RAID. I wonder if there's an equivalent setting for the PCIe M.2 slots that is set to RAID instead of <standard>. A delve into the BIOS around NVME setup might be worthwhile.

Gigamite · 30 Oct 2022 at 10:27

I found nothing obvioues in my bios but when I changed the M2 drive to a lower socket on my board the problem went away. So it looks as if it's either a faulty socket or the WD 850x just couldn't handle the load. When I bought that drive something was telling me to stick with Samsung drives, I should have listerned.

Snapshot · 30 Oct 2022 at 18:16

I believe that two of the M.2 slots are controlled by the CPU and two by the chipset so it would be interesting to know which worked and which didn't. I've had several WD NVMe SSDs without any problems but no PCIe 4 yet.

Gigamite · 30 Oct 2022 at 20:18

Yes, in my case it was a Asus Rog z690-A motherboard with one CPU slot, the others being chipset. The CPU slot seems to use some form of raid mechanic with the drive which the WD 850x didn't seem to be able to handle even though on paper it should. As the WD850x became unreadable or unusable I used my old Samsung M2 in one of the chipset sockets, that works perfectly.
I have ordered a M2 caddy so that I can play about with the WD 850x and see if I can bring it back to life. if I can't then I will be returning it and buying a Samsung gen4 drive.

Vince · 30 Oct 2022 at 20:42

m.2 raid is a thing and there is a setting for it somewhere in most modern bios. It's generally properly hidden and I know on mine it's not at all where you would expect it to be and also requires certain other settings to be enabled to use it if I remember correctly. Check if you can get any smart data from the drive using crystal disk info... normally a really good indication of raid being active on a controller is the drive details will be missing in most drive health software

Gigamite · 31 Oct 2022 at 07:55

Okay I have been through bios from top to bottom and there seems to be no sign what so ever of anything to do with raid apart from one. The settings for intel's rapid storage are now firmly disabled, but before when I had the WD 850x in the top m2 socket controlled by CPU the RST setting in bios was greyed out (you could take no action). Also as far as I can remember the list of seta drives were controlled by RST.
Is it possible that by seating the WD 850x in the top M2 slot caused for RST to kick in and the drive was actually trying to use it? Why would it do that if the WD drive doesn't support it and would fail?
Might it be some WD trick to achieve the speeds that it promises to deliver.