Question Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite RAID 0 Configuration not working

[djmeph]

I just ordered the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite motherboard with two Samsung 980 Pro NVMe drives. I've gone through this tutorial to setup a RAID 0 array with both drives:

https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/WebPage/539/images/raid.pdf

These are the only drives connected to the motherboard. I am able to configure the array using the RAIDXpert2 Configuration Utility but when I boot into the Windows Installation USB it shows as two separate drives. I am expecting it to either show a single drive (The RAID 0 array) or no drives and have to install the driver, but instead I'm just seeing both of my drives separately. It also shows the drives as having MBR partitions, which seems to be part of the RAID initialization.

The preferred outcome would be to be able to install Windows on the RAID 0 array.

 

[rgd1101]

did you do the 1-2 step? Installing the RAID Driver

 

[djmeph]

did you do the 1-2 step? Installing the RAID Driver

Yes, I actually tried this two ways. First I tried it with the Windows 11 installation USB and the AMD RAID Preinstall Driver for Windows 11. Then i tried it again with the Windows 10 installation USB and the Windows 10 preinstall driver. Loading the driver in either case didn't change the drive list as seen in the photo above.

 

[rgd1101]

using the latest raid driver?
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/support#support-dl-driver-sataraidahci

 

[djmeph]

using the latest raid driver?
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/support#support-dl-driver-sataraidahci

Yes

 

[USAFRet]

Multiple issues with this...

Why the RAID 0?
It is vanishingly rare to find a valid reason for a RAID 0 (with any drive type) in the consumer realm.

RAID 0 was never really intended for the OS drive.

RAID 0 + NVMe drives can be slower than the individual drives themselves. The RAID overhead sucks up any potential speed benefit.

The motherboard has only one M.2 port that is PCIe 4.0 x 4 compatible.
The other M.2 ports are PCIe 3.0, slowing down the 980 Pro even on its own.
Even if you do get this running, you are crippling the 980 Pro performance.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/sp#sp



So....why the RAID 0? What benefit are you looking to get from it?
(aside from grater complexity and fail potential)

 

[djmeph]

Multiple issues with this...

Why the RAID 0?
It is vanishingly rare to find a valid reason for a RAID 0 (with any drive type) in the consumer realm.

RAID 0 was never really intended for the OS drive.

RAID 0 + NVMe drives can be slower than the individual drives themselves. The RAID overhead sucks up any potential speed benefit.

The motherboard has only one M.2 port that is PCIe 4.0 x 4 compatible.
The other M.2 ports are PCIe 3.0, slowing down the 980 Pro even on its own.
Even if you do get this running, you are crippling the 980 Pro performance.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/sp#sp



So....why the RAID 0? What benefit are you looking to get from it?
(aside from grater complexity and fail potential)

I did not come here for your opinions, I came here for help getting my hardware to work the way it's supposed to work. Even if you were correct about the performance degredation in RAID 0, which you're not, what if someone had a similar use case for RAID 1? Would you tell them they're doing it wrong too? It's not really any of your business what people are using their hardware for, if something isn't working the way it's supposed to. I'm not trying to be mean, but if people are searching Google for these answers and they come across this thread, your reply is not helping anyone in any way.

That said. I finally figured it out. I had to load multiple drivers, including the RAID bottom and RAID controller. There are multiple drivers included with the Windows Preinstall download that is found on the Gigabyte website. When you select the correct RAID bottom driver, all of the disks will disappear from the list, and then when you select the correct controller driver, the RAID volume will show and you can install Windows on it.

I ran some benchmarks to test your hypothesis. On CrystalDiskMark Sequential Read Q8T1 test there is no performance difference between RAID 0 and a single drive. The other 7 tests all see a 5-20% performance increase, with write speeds seeing the biggest benefit from RAID 0.

Furthermore, there was a signficant decrease in performance on a single drive on the M.2 PCIe 3.0 slot. By using RAID 0 I gain performance in every test over the 2nd drive connected to the PCIe 3.0 slot, with no loss and better write speeds compared to the PCIe 4.0 slot.

So the choice is clear to me. There is absolutely no reason not to use RAID 0, for my use case. There is nothing stored on this machine that can't be downloaded from the cloud in a day.

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 0 benchmarks are great.
Actual user facing performance, maybe not.

Good luck.
Keep good backups.

 

[DSzymborski]

I did not come here for your opinions, I came here for help getting my hardware to work the way it's supposed to work. Even if you were correct about the performance degredation in RAID 0, which you're not, what if someone had a similar use case for RAID 1? Would you tell them they're doing it wrong too? It's not really any of your business what people are using their hardware for, if something isn't working the way it's supposed to. I'm not trying to be mean, but if people are searching Google for these answers and they come across this thread, your reply is not helping anyone in any way.

Yes, actually, you came here for opinions. You do not get to come into this forum and talk down to or dictate to anyone, from a new poster to a regular to a moderator to the site owner, what advice you allow them to provide in response to a question, so long as it is related to the question. Nobody here is your employee.

This thread is closed.