Question MegaRAID only works when booting from BIOS ?

[CognitionFailure]

Relevant Config
i7-12700K
ASU TUF Z690+
Windows 10 22H2


I have a MegaRAID 9540-2M2 installed in my home desktop. It was working fine for a while, then I went and updated both my BIOS and the device firmware to the most recent versions.

After this, the drive stopped being recognized in Windows, being completely absent in Disk Management, and it shows in Device Manager with this error:

" This device cannot start. (Code 10) An I/O adapter hardware error has occurred "

It's a problem others have had with this card.

But sometimes it did work, seemingly randomly. Then I nailed down the pattern. When I go into my BIOS and have it start windows from the boot menu instead of going straight from POST or grub, it works just fine, no I/O error. Although storcli still fails to find the card. Booting Windows from BIOS so far gets the megaraid card working every time, and without it, the drive is always missing.

Common fixes I've seen on the internet: I already have CSM disabled in bios. There aren't any cables to unplug from the 2m2 as it doesn't use external SATA cables. Already tried disabling the device in Device Manager and restarting, no dice. Would welcome any troubleshooting ideas.

A small note, after I did my BIOS/firmware updates, my motherboard RGB strips stay lit up even when the motherboard is off.

If the question "why did you update your firmware?" is asked, the MegaRAID card wasn't working with my preferred Linux distro, and I was hoping the firmware updates would fix that. Whoops.

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS versions.

Dual boot build?

= = = =

What is the requirement driving the use of the MegaRAID card?

RAID of any level (or "Mega"?) being applicable to only certain environments and specific requirements.

Consider also that if the card has failed to work on two different systems then the card may be faulty.

 

[CognitionFailure]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS versions.

Dual boot build?

= = = =

What is the requirement driving the use of the MegaRAID card?

RAID of any level (or "Mega"?) being applicable to only certain environments and specific requirements.

Consider also that if the card has failed to work on two different systems then the card may be faulty.

Yeah, dual boot. The point was having a RAID drive common between the two OS, as afaik there is no common software raid options between linux and windows. I use the drive for my data, ie no games or OS. It served this role pretty well, though now I might look into a NAS as this card has always been finicky to get to work.

The card still works. I have access to it right now, but only because I did the boot from BIOS step.

 

[Ralston18]

Fair enough.

However, as a gentle question, has the data "sharing" requirement truly required RAID?

A common source drive is one thing. RAID is another.

 

[CognitionFailure]

You can never foresee when drive redundancy is going to be necessary.

A NAS might be the better option for several reasons but being able to get that shared data between two OS in the same chassis for just 1 pcie slot was a decent setup when it worked.

 

[Ralston18]

What RAID configuration is being used?

 

[USAFRet]

You can never foresee when drive redundancy is going to be necessary.

A NAS might be the better option for several reasons but being able to get that shared data between two OS in the same chassis for just 1 pcie slot was a decent setup when it worked.

The data in my NAS can be accessed by any system or OS in the house.
Win 10, Win 11, Linux, Android tablet, phones, whatever.

No RAID involved.

 

[lantis3]

Agree with OP that hardware RAID is required if dual boot between Linux and Windows, of course then the file system must be NTFS since Windows can't read anything else, yet Linux can read/write a lot of file systems in addition to NTFS.
No software raid array can be read by both system, however.

 

[CognitionFailure]

What RAID configuration is being used?

RAID 1

 

[CognitionFailure]

The data in my NAS can be accessed by any system or OS in the house.
Win 10, Win 11, Linux, Android tablet, phones, whatever.

No RAID involved.

Do you typically pull down data from the NAS, work on the local drive and then throw it back on when finished?

I'm concerned that if I'm sloppy I'll end up with different versions of files on different drives.

 

[USAFRet]

Do you typically pull down data from the NAS, work on the local drive and then throw it back on when finished?

I'm concerned that if I'm sloppy I'll end up with different versions of files on different drives.

Generally, files start on the PC/workstation.

When done, the finished product and probably all the dev files go to the NAS.
If in the future I need to edit that file...open it in the NAS location, and save back to there.

But to the wider concept: RAID has nothing to do with universal access. RAID 1 or whatever is just a means to ward off physical drive fail. It does nothing for universal access, or actual data backups.