TR Forums

I am trying to add 2 x 450 GB WDC Velociraptor drives as a RAID 0 on the Intel 6GB/s Ports 0 and 1
Windows 7 Pro 64bit is on a Kingston 64GB SDD on SATA 3gbs port 4
Kingston 30GB SSD on SATA 3gbs port 5
Marvel SATA ports disabled
I have added the Intel RST drivers to Windows.
I can set RAID mode in BIOS and then get into the Intel Rapid Storage Option ROM utility by pressing Ctrl+I now and setup the RAID Volumes and then exit.
When Windows starts to load it crashes to BSOD
Resetting to AHCI Mode system boots OK

Any suggestion what to try next!

[Product Information]
*Product Type : Motherboard
*Product Model : P8P67 PRO

[Motherboard Specification]
*Motherboard Revision : 3.0
*Motherboard BIOS Revision : 1502

[VGA Card Specification]
*VGA Card Model : 560TI 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E
*VGA Card Chipset : NVIDIA
*VGA Card Driver : 270.61

[CPU Specification]
*CPU Vendor : INTEL
*CPU Type : LGA1155 I7 2600K
*CPU Speed : 3.40GHZ

[Memory Specification]
*Memory Vendor : GSKILL
*Memory Model : DDR3-1600 PC3-12800
*Memory Capacity : 4 X 4 GB

[HDD Specification]
HDD Vendor : KINGSTON SSD + WDC VR
HDD Model : 64GB + 30GB SSD +2 X 450GB VR
HDD Capacity : 64GB + 30gB + 2 X 450GB

*Operating System : Windows 7 Pro 64bit

If I understand what you're saying correctly, you're trying to switch between AHCI and RAID. This usually ends badly, as what most people try to do is essentially dramatically change the disk controller that the Windows boot device uses. When Windows tries to boot after the change, you get a prompt BSOD because what's in the registry about the storage controller is completely wrong.

Instead, have the system on AHCI, enable the Marvell controller, boot, install the Marvell controller in Windows, reboot, make sure the Marvell controller is recognised by Windows, reboot again, switch the boot device (the SSD) to the Marvell controller's ports, boot again, hopefully it works, then try switching the Intel ports to RAID, boot again, it hopefully still boots, then reboot and set up the RAID array.

This method should give Windows the information it needs to auto-detect what's necessary to boot properly. I'm not sure whether you'll be able to switch the SSD back to the Intel ports after that and still get Windows to boot, but it might. If you want to try that, I would try it but with only the SSD connected and Windows will hopefully figure it out. In this scenario, when the SSD is connected into the RAID system (even if it isn't in a RAID array per se), Windows will recognise it as a different type of disk I think, and it might not like that.

I used the following method successfully on my current install. I suggest trying it first because it's considerably less involved than moving drive connections around inside your machine:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975453

The instructions describe a slightly different issue (apparently the installation of a disk with a RAID signature causes the controller to go into RAID mode?) but basically you boot into Windows, make the registry tweak and then reboot and enable RAID. Your system should boot up normally at which point you can install the RAID manager software.

Thanks for the above sensible suggestions. I have read elsewhere about the Marvel option. However I am thinking of creating a boot RAID 0 now as I have just received a second Kingston 64GB SSD. So first I will try another option that I have gleaned from several posts elsewhere, which is to start in RAID 0 mode, build the RAIDs via Intel Rom utility and then install a fresh copy of Windows including the Intel RST driver during the process. I would have had to do the Windows reinstall anyway to create the boot RAID. I will report what happens in the next day or so.

But thanks for the above especially as the suggestion I got from the ASUS tech support was as follows " In this situation,I still suggest you RMA the board,then onboard RAID controller is unfunctional."

I hope this is NOT the case.