Question Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX / AMD Ryzen 5600X. Won't work with one M.2 nVME SSD and four SATA-III HDDs?

[Laurence5905]

Sorry in advance for the long post, but I want y'all to have all the info. It's not like I'm a newbie to this -- been building PCs since the late 1980s. So I've done all of the basic troubleshooting stuff, of course. And all of the advanced stuff I can think of, or glean from a Google search. I'm totally out of ideas of what to try to do next. Hopefully one of y'all will have an idea that I haven't tried yet...

Anyway, here are the system spec's:

• AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, 3.7 GHz
• Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX motherboard (hardware version 1.0, upgraded BIOS to version 14e, turned OFF "CSM support.")
• G.Skill Ripjaws DDR-4 3600 RAM, 32GB (16GB x 2) (running at the motherboard default RAM speed or the XMP speed makes no difference)
• EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB (I don't play games on this machine -- this card is used only for Plex encoding/decoding.)
• Western Digital Black 256GB M.2 nVME
• Western Digital Black 4TB SATA-III HDD
• Western Digital Red 8TB SATA-III NAS drives (three of them, Windows Storage Spaces Parity RAID, 14.5TB useable space.)
• Thermaltake Smart-series 600W 80=plus power supply
• NZXT H510 case
• no RGB except what's built-in to the motherboard.
• Windows 10 Pro, version 21H1
• All motherboard and video-card drivers fully up-to-date from their respective manufacturers' websites - none of them from Microsoft Update.

So I'm having this very weird issue. When I have only the 256GB M.2 and the 4TB SATA-III HDD plugged into the M2A slot and SATA port 0, respectively, it's very quick, boots in seconds, runs like a champ. Just fantastic. Everything I expected from this computer.

When I add the 3 NAS drives to the three remaining SATA-III ports, it all falls flat. Takes TEN FULL MINUTES to boot!!! No joke!!! TEN MINUTES!! I timed it!

Once it finally boots, Windows Storage Spaces Management tells me that the Parity RAID pool I have set up on those three NAS drives is malfunctioning -- two drives show "OK" but the third has "Error" next to it and a red X. BUT NONE OF MY 8TB DRIVES ARE BAD!!! If I plug them back into my old motherboard, my Parity RAID pool works perfectly fine, as it always has!

And it's not like the new motherboard doesn't detect all 5 drives in BIOS -- if I go into BIOS and look, it sees the M.2 nVME SSD and all 4 SATA-III HDDs. Windows detects them all, too -- it just tells me that one of them is bad, when I know for a fact it isn't.

And I can't get Disk Management to run AT ALL when the three 8TB NAS drives are plugged in. Storage Spaces Management runs just fine (that's where it shows me that it detects all 3 of the NAS drives), but Disk Management just sits there "connecting to virtual disk service" and never does anything -- I actually let it sit for well over an hour trying to wait for something to time out or whatever, but it never did.

So what is going on here?!!

One weird thing that I noticed when I was installing Windows on this new computer, before I plugged in the three 8TB drives -- it saw the 4TB HDD in SATA port 0 as Drive 0 and the M.2 nVME drive as Drive 1. I had to force Windows Install to use Drive 1 - it tried to default to Drive 0 which was my HDD, not my SSD. Maybe that's somehow related? Maybe the M.2 is interfering with the SATA ports somehow? I have no idea. If it were interfering, why would all 5 drives show up in BIOS and in Windows?

Does anyone have a clue as to what might be wrong here? I'm completely out of ideas. I appreciate any suggestions -- thanks.

[personal info redacted]

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Thermaltake Smart-series 600W 80=plus power supply
^ You shouldn't have invested in that expensive paperweight, not with the rest of the specs in your build.

Pertaining to the question about the OS install and drive allocation via the OS, you're advised to have only the drive you wish to install the OS onto connected while everything else is disconnected. Once OS installation is complete, you're then advised to reconnect each drive one by one...with reboots to rule out any anomalies that might happen with lugging all drives at once and hen having a headache trying to find what is where.

The drives on your old machine were on a RAID 5 array?

 

[Laurence5905]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Thermaltake Smart-series 600W 80=plus power supply
^ You shouldn't have invested in that expensive paperweight, not with the rest of the specs in your build.

Pertaining to the question about the OS install and drive allocation via the OS, you're advised to have only the drive you wish to install the OS onto connected while everything else is disconnected. Once OS installation is complete, you're then advised to reconnect each drive one by one...with reboots to rule out any anomalies that might happen with lugging all drives at once and hen having a headache trying to find what is where.

The drives on your old machine were on a RAID 5 array?

I've had that power-supply for a few years now. 600W is more than enough for this machine -- it's not like I'm running an RTX 3090 or something. LOL. Nothing wrong with Thermaltake -- I've seen no negative reviews of this particular power-supply. Not really sure why you call it a paperweight...

Anyway, I had to install Windows while both the M.2 and the 4TB drive were in the system together, because I put the "Users" folder on the 4TB drive instead of the M.2 drive. So I can't have only the M.2 boot-drive in there while installing. And it wasn't really a problem, honestly -- Windows wanted to default to installing on Drive 0, which the motherboard set the 4TB drive to. I just had to force Windows to not install to its default location...

And, yes, the three 8TB NAS drives were attached to 3 SATA-III ports on my old motherboard, set up as a Parity RAID in the Windows Storage Management utility. I use them for my Plex Media server, and for anything else that needs to be backed up without me paying for a gigantic amount of storage on-line somewhere.

The only truly weird problem I've had is this business with BIOS and Windows recognizing all 5 drives in the system, but Windows telling me that one of the drives is bad. Still no idea why that happens...

 

[Laurence5905]

I've had that power-supply for a few years now. 600W is more than enough for this machine -- it's not like I'm running an RTX 3090 or something. LOL. Nothing wrong with Thermaltake -- I've seen no negative reviews of this particular power-supply. Not really sure why you call it a paperweight...

Anyway, I had to install Windows while both the M.2 and the 4TB drive were in the system together, because I put the "Users" folder on the 4TB drive instead of the M.2 drive. So I can't have only the M.2 boot-drive in there while installing. And it wasn't really a problem, honestly -- Windows wanted to default to installing on Drive 0, which the motherboard set the 4TB drive to. I just had to force Windows to not install to its default location...

And, yes, the three 8TB NAS drives were attached to 3 SATA-III ports on my old motherboard, set up as a Parity RAID in the Windows Storage Management utility. I use them for my Plex Media server, and for anything else that needs to be backed up without me paying for a gigantic amount of storage on-line somewhere.

The only truly weird problem I've had is this business with BIOS and Windows recognizing all 5 drives in the system, but Windows telling me that one of the drives is bad. Still no idea why that happens...

I was concerned about your comments re: the PSU, so I've been looking around. Still only see the normal number of bad reviews of this PSU on Amazon -- about 2 to 3 percent, some of which are stupid stuff like "can't return outside of return-window" and the usual PEBKAC issues. So I'd say 1 in 50 of them are actually bad PSUs, judging by that? Anyway, I've had this one for a bit over 4 years now -- if it were going to fail, it would've failed. They always die quickly if they're gonna die.

And also, just to be absolutely certain about the power-requirements for my build, I went to PCPartPicker.com and entered all my info into their System Builder tool -- it estimates the maximum power-draw at 339 watts ( https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Laurence5905/saved/qCwTYJ ). So just over half of my PSU's capabilities. And even if you give it a "fudge factor" of 10% or so, that brings it up to, say, 375 watts -- no stress at all for this PSU. (Just for kicks, I even swapped out the GTX1060 video card for the RTX 3060 Ti that I have in my gaming machine, and it's still only about 450 watts estimated. Less than 500 watts even with a 10% "fudge factor."

So I'm satisfied that this PSU won't be trouble. Made me worry there for a bit, but I think I'm good. I'm not stressing it out at all.

 

[Laurence5905]

I was concerned about your comments re: the PSU, so I've been looking around. Still only see the normal number of bad reviews of this PSU on Amazon -- about 2 to 3 percent, some of which are stupid stuff like "can't return outside of return-window" and the usual PEBKAC issues. So I'd say 1 in 50 of them are actually bad PSUs, judging by that? Anyway, I've had this one for a bit over 4 years now -- if it were going to fail, it would've failed. They always die quickly if they're gonna die.

And also, just to be absolutely certain about the power-requirements for my build, I went to PCPartPicker.com and entered all my info into their System Builder tool -- it estimates the maximum power-draw at 339 watts ( https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Laurence5905/saved/qCwTYJ ). So just over half of my PSU's capabilities. And even if you give it a "fudge factor" of 10% or so, that brings it up to, say, 375 watts -- no stress at all for this PSU. (Just for kicks, I even swapped out the GTX1060 video card for the RTX 3060 Ti that I have in my gaming machine, and it's still only about 450 watts estimated. Less than 500 watts even with a 10% "fudge factor."

So I'm satisfied that this PSU won't be trouble. Made me worry there for a bit, but I think I'm good. I'm not stressing it out at all.

Well.... Hmmmmmmmm.... There's a group called PSU Cultists that says this PSU is so bad that it should be replaced immediately. Seriously? Why did I keep looking? I was perfectly happy in my ignorance... Ugh...

Fine. I'm buying a new PSU... A Corsair RM-750X. Tier "A" on the PSU Cultists site. I don't NEED 750 watts, but for future upgrades I might... So I may as well get it now...

Anyway -- back to the original problem that brought me here... Issues when 5 drives are connected, even though BIOS sees all 5, and Windows sees all 5, it just can't seem to actually read/write all 5.

 

[Laurence5905]

SOLVED!

Apparently one of my 3 RAID drives is bad? I had no idea. My old computer never told me. And the old motherboard would just happily boot right up, no delays at all, despite the bad drive, with no warnings whatsoever from Windows Storage Spaces? 😲

That's why I didn't notice the problem with that drive at first -- plugging it into the old motherboard, and having the system boot as quickly as it ever did, and then being able to read and copy files from the RAID disks tricked me into thinking all was good. In order to see that there was a problem, I had to open the Windows Storage Spaces Management app on the old computer and look at the drive configuration -- it wasn't giving me a warning in the notification area at all for some reason.

So I improperly blamed the new motherboard, when the issue is actually one of the drives. RMA'd it under warranty and the new one will be shipped sometime this week.