Raid Issues

Samwise.Gamgee · 12 Jun 2016 at 19:54

Hi Guys, was hoping you could give me a bit of tech support!

I'm experiencing a very odd issue with my PC where the raid keeps on failing. I'm currently running 2x 500GB SSD's in raid 0 on an Maximus VI Extreme using the motherboards intel raid controller. Basically when I boot the PC it comes up with a message on the raid saying it's failed I reboot the PC then all is hunky dory and it boots to windows.

Things I have tried to fix it:
Reinstall Windows 10
Delete and Rebuild Raid
Reset CMOS and change battery
Reset BIOS
Re Flash BIOS
Rebuild raid as raid 1 (Still fails but just says degraded)

I'm now at the point where I'm slowly running out of ideas and patience, so any advice would be massively appreciated. Oh also from time to time when I shut the PC down windows will shutdown but the PC stays on and I have to hold the power button in. Only happens once in a blue moon though.

Thanks

Sam

Samwise.Gamgee · 12 Jun 2016 at 20:19

Sorry forgot to mention I have also ran a health check on the SSD's and both are at 100% health. Both passed S.M.A.R.T test and reported to be fine.

joeyjojo · 13 Jun 2016 at 10:48

I can't think of anything you haven't tried. Some workarounds in the order I would do them:

Sleep PC instead of shutting down
Don't use RAID
Use software LVM (On Linux I'd use the built-in LVM or ZFS, not sure what Windows can do)
Buy a RAID card

linktoinsanity · 13 Jun 2016 at 10:53

I am not really sure using RAID 0 on SSDs is the best idea. RAID 1 for redundancy might be worthwhile, but as far as Striping, I would just run one alone.

Steampunk · 13 Jun 2016 at 11:05

Are you running the lates BIOS and RAID drivers? Check here. I doubt you'll see much benefit from running RAID 0 on a couple of SSDs.

Vince · 13 Jun 2016 at 11:13

Steampunk said:
Are you running the lates BIOS and RAID drivers? Check here. I doubt you'll see much benefit from running RAID 0 on a couple of SSDs.

I run a pair in raid 0 and you get significant read gains on raid. If what your doing is IOP sensitive then there really is nothing wrong with a raid 0 stripe on SSD's.

I would check the drive firmware as well as your motherboard bios and raid driver as a first port of call. Me and a mate had similar issues setting up EVO 850's on an SB950 controller, as it turned out there was some kind of hardware incompatibility which meant that they would never work.

Samwise.Gamgee · 13 Jun 2016 at 19:10

Steampunk said:
Are you running the lates BIOS and RAID drivers? Check here. I doubt you'll see much benefit from running RAID 0 on a couple of SSDs.

I sure am running the latest SSD Firmware and BIOS Revision but thanks for the suggestion.

Samwise.Gamgee · 13 Jun 2016 at 19:16

joeyjojo said:
I can't think of anything you haven't tried. Some workarounds in the order I would do them:

Sleep PC instead of shutting down

Don't use RAID

Use software LVM (On Linux I'd use the built-in LVM or ZFS, not sure what Windows can do)

Buy a RAID card

I could definitely look into buying a raid card, however the setup has been working for the past 5 or so months and never really had an issue, is it possible the raid controller on the motherboard itself could be broken?