New Raid 10 locking up at boot

[TheAlternatve]

Hello,

I'm building new pc that will also act as media server.

64 GB SSD for OS
4 1.5 TB HDD to be in RAID 10
AsRock Z77 Pro4 Mobo with AMI UEFI

I followed previous suggestions and first installed only the SSD, set to ACHI, and loaded Windows 7 successfully. Loaded virus software, fully updated, so far so good.

Next I connected the 4 1.5 TB drives, booted up and changed ACHI to RAID. Rebooted and RAID option (ctl+i) became available, went into RAID settings and created new RAID 10 volume.

Reboot again, system never leaves the initial splash screen. Screen is totally locked, cannot ctl+alt+del or boot back into UEFI. My only option is to power down fully and clear CMOS, which changes RAID back to ACHI. When back in ACHI Windows boots as expected (RAID 10 not functioning of course).

As a test I also totally removed the SSD, so only the blank 1.5 HDDs are in the system. It appears that If RAID is enabled at all, the system freezes at initial POST.

I'm pretty tech savy normally and have built quite a few systems over the years, but this is my first attempt at a RAID. I'm at a loss, any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

[tomatthe]

You needed to have the controller in Raid from the beginning. Your ssd will still run in ahci mode if the controller is set to raid. There is very likely a way to fix this without reinstalling things, but you will need to search a bit for that.

Personally I would just put the controller in raid, setup the array then reinstall the os to the ssd.

The first link from google was this forum post which I did not read so follow at your own risk,

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/218079-can-i-switch-my-boot-disk-ahci-mode-raid-mode.html

 

[TheAlternatve]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I still say image the OS disk on AHCI without the RAID disks installed initially, so there is no chance Windows writes anything to the RAID disks during installation. Once OS is installed, connect the RAID drives, flip from AHCI to RAID, then setup the RAID in configuration. To update:

After more trial and error, I discovered that the optical drive was causing the problem. I moved the optical drive from the Intel SATA connection to the ASMedia SATA connection, and the system allowed the change to RAID and booted properly. The fact that the non-raided SSD resides on the Intel SATA connection with the 4 RAID drives kept me from realizing the optical drive could be the problem.

So for anyone else who is building a similar setup, the set of Intel SATA connections should house the RAID disks and your non-raided OS disk, and any optical drives should go on the ASMedia SATA connection. The system works flawlessly with this configuration.