[SOLVED] Asus Prime X-570 Pro - basic RAID questions

[Kinora]

Doing my first build in 10 years; been out of it for too long! I am a bit confused with the very brief instructions that arrive with my X-570 Pro MB. The MB has 6 x SATA ports and 2 x M.2 ports, but it appears only the SATA ports can be RAIDed.

I am fine with that; I just need clarification. Say for instance, I fully populate the MB SATA slots with identical 1TB SSDs, but only want to use 4 of these SSDs for RAID 10 (1+0) and keep the other two in JBOD status. The manual seems to suggest you can only have your bios set for ACHI OR RAID, not both.

Or, can you simply pre-build the RAID 10 on 4 of the HDDs, install Windows 10 and then add the 2 additional SSDs for JBOD use?

Can multiple instances of RAID be installed along with JBOD? Say 2 X RAID 0 instances and 2 x JBOD drives?

Might be a simple question for you, but like I say, it's been a long time since dealing with new hardware and I have a lot of quick catching up to do.

Thank you for your help in advance.

 

[USAFRet]

Why the desire for the RAID?

With solid state drives, the 0 (striped) portion of the RAID 10 does not grant any performance benefit like it may have done with HDD's.
The 1 (mirrored) portion is not a backup for your data. That is better handled with a real backup routine.

 

[Kinora]

Because I have had bad experiences with Spanned Windows Volumes and I need to deal with uncompressed 4K video footage. At least with RAID 10 there is a chance to rebuild the RAID should my spinning disk backup fail.

Also, push come to shove, I might have to resort to cheaper spinning disks for my video storage RAID and only have SSDs for the OS and cache.

So, if you must, substitute "spinning disks" for SSDs above...

 

[USAFRet]

To the motherboard, there is little or no difference between SATA spinning or SATA solid state.
The user, of course, sees the big speed difference. And a single SSD trumps a RAID 0 of spinning drives.

And a 1 or 2TB NVMe drive for your working project(s) in one of the M.2 ports trumps all.

But..."can it be done" depends on your particular motherboard and its capabilities. What does the user manual say?

 

[Kinora]

It basically goes through the process of setting up a RAID volume (0, 1 or 10 only), installing the OS and installing the RAID drivers. Then it documents how to rebuild a failed Array (1 and 10).

My basic uncertainty is, to have the most flexibility (humor me), I might want 2 RAIDs ; a "0" and a "1" as well as at least one stand alone SATA drive.

It doesn't address the basic issue of IF you can build multiple RAID volumes OR if once you set your bios to RAID, you are locked into using all 6 SATA ports strictly for RAID use; although I cannot imagine that being the case, I put nothing past computer component manufacturers and have seen some truly bizarre hardware limitations in the past.

I would assume you should be able to define the 1st RAID, reboot and re-enter BIOS, define the 2nd RAID, reboot, load the OS on a stand alone drive and then boot with 2 RAID volumes with 1 SATA OS drive and 1 port available for another stand alone drive.

However, I cannot find any documentation or examples online, as most people appear to simply build a gaming machine with simple setups.

 

[USAFRet]

RAID does not lock you into using all ports in an array. You should be able to use the individually, or designate a couple of drives as RAID 0.
Unsure if you can have more than 1 RAID array.

 

[Kinora]

In retrospect, yes, I couldn't have more than 1 RAID 1, as it takes a minimum of 4 discs! Should have put 2 RAID 0 instances as an example...

Guess it always comes down to "try it and see".

In any regard, the MB has 2 x M.2 slots (not RAID compatible) and I intend on putting the OS on one of them. Hope it's bootable!

Thanks for your help.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, the 2x M.2 ports are bootable.

Personally, I would use 1 for the OS and applications, the other for working projects.
When a project is complete, offload to a SATA SSD.

A RAID 1 needs 2 drives minimum, not 4. Same with RAID 0.

 

[popatim]

Raid mode is often an all or none situation though there are a few boards that exclude 2 ports from it.
I dont have experience with any x570 boards so you will have to enable raid and see what your options are. If none are excluded you often can pass a drive thru by setting it up as a single drive raid1.