[SOLVED] OS and SSD setup issues

[Necro Critic]

I just built my first PC, and I'm having some difficulty getting it set up. I would greatly appreciate some help, especially if anyone is familiar with the Aorus BIOS. I've tried posting this question just about everywhere I could online all week, and what few responses I've been getting have been less than helpful.

I have 4 SSDs in my build (2 M.2 & 2 Sata). I'm trying to set it up so that the OS is stored in and boots from the dedicated 250GB M.2, with the 2 2TB Satas in a RAID 0 array for general storage and gaming, and the 2TB M.2 for important stuff. I tried to set it up myself, but the OS only boots from UEFI, won't boot from the drive it's installed on, and only recognizes the single 250GB drive for storage (the BIOS recognizes the other drives, just not the OS). Also the BIOS won't let me set up RAID, despite me following the mobo's user manual to the letter.

Relevant parts:

• Aorus Xtreme Motherboard (BIOS is up-to-date)
• 2TB Samsung 870 QVO Sata x2
• 250GB Samsung 970 EVO+ M.2
• 2TB Samsung 970 EVO+ M.2
• Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM disc

 

[USAFRet]

First off, have ONLY that one drive connected during the install.
Other drives get connected after the OS is up and running.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

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RAID 0 with 2x 870 QVO? Why on earth would you do that?

 

[Necro Critic]

First off, have ONLY that one drive connected during the install.
Other drives get connected after the OS is up and running.

Unfortunately, the OS is already installed. Since I still have the OEM disc and product key, can I do a complete uninstall and reinstall?

RAID 0 with 2x 870 QVO? Why on earth would you do that?

Convenience, mostly. I prefer saving everything to a single volume rather than splitting between multiples, and I'd prefer striping the data, since spanning it would render one of the drives completely useless until the other is full. Plus, the mobo only supports RAID 0, 1, and 10. I'm aware of the "RAID 0 doubles your drive's failure rate" argument, but given the already ludicrously low failure rate of these drives, I'm not particularly worried. Besides, I'm putting all of the important work-related files on the 2TB M.2, and I'm planning on getting a decent backup once my budget allows for it.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, do a full reinstall, with only the one desired drive connected.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

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Also, show us a screencap of the Disk Management window.

 

[Necro Critic]

Stupid question: How do I uninstall Windows?

 

[USAFRet]

Stupid question: How do I uninstall Windows?

You don't (can't) 'uninstall'.

In the process of the new OS install, you boot from the install USB, DELETE all existing partitions, and continue on.

 

[Necro Critic]

You don't (can't) 'uninstall'.

In the process of the new OS install, you boot from the install USB, DELETE all existing partitions, and continue on.

Just to make sure I understand: I remove every ssd except the intended boot drive, boot from the OEM disc, then reinstall?

 

[USAFRet]

Just to make sure I understand: I remove every ssd except the intended boot drive, boot from the OEM disc, then reinstall?

Yes.
All drives except the one you wish to install the OS on.

 

[Necro Critic]

Okay. I just reinstalled Windows 10 and confirmed that it's booting from the designated SSD. Do I need to format the other drives before I attempt RAID 0?

 

[USAFRet]

Okay. I just reinstalled Windows 10 and confirmed that it's booting from the designated SSD. Do I need to format the other drives before I attempt RAID 0?

Creating a RAID 0 (For the love of FSM why?!?) will necessitate a full reformat of the drives involved.

 

[Necro Critic]

The OS still doesn't recognize the other drives. It also now has a "System Reserved" drive that I think is listed as my disc reader.

They're showing up in the device manager, but how do I format them and allocate them as storage space?

 

[USAFRet]

The OS still doesn't recognize the other drives. It also now has a "System Reserved" drive that I think is listed as my disc reader.

They're showing up in the device manager, but how do I format them and allocate them as storage space?

Show us a screencap of the current Disk Management window.

 

[Necro Critic]

Show us a screencap of the current Disk Management window.

 

[Necro Critic]

Does it matter which partition style I use to initialize?

 

[USAFRet]

Does it matter which partition style I use to initialize?

In the context of what?

MBR vs GPT?
Little reason to not do GPT.

Or are you talking about something else?

 

[Necro Critic]

MBR vs. GPT, I guess. I literally don't know what the difference is or what this affects.

 

[SkyNetRising]

MBR vs. GPT, I guess. I literally don't know what the difference is or what this affects.

You use GPT, if drive is larger than 2TB or you want more than 4 partitions on the drive or you want to boot from this drive in UEFI mode.
If none of this applies, then it doesn't matter.

 

[Necro Critic]

Here's my current Disk Management screen.

Disk 0: 970 EVO+ 2TB
Disk 1: 870 QVO 2TB
Disk 2: 970 EVO+ 250GB
Disk 3: 870 QVO 2TB

 

[SkyNetRising]

Here's my current Disk Management screen.

Upload to imgur.com and post link

 

[Necro Critic]

Current Disk Management screen

 

[SkyNetRising]

1. Delete partition E:
2. Initialize uninitialized drives - Disk 0 and Disk 3 (GPT or MBR - it doesn't matter here, GPT is newer )
3. Create single large partition on each of drives Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk 3 and format/assign drive letters

You may want to leave some space on SSDs unallocated. It's recommended to have ~10% - 15%) unallocated space for wear leveling and performance considerations.

 

[Necro Critic]

Okay, since people have been fairly opinionated on my decision to use RAID 0, I do have another question. Would it be better to create a RAID 0 array from my BIOS, or to allocate them as a striped volume in Windows?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Forget about RAID 0 on SSDs. Not worth it.

 

[Necro Critic]

Forget about RAID 0 on SSDs. Not worth it.

Again, this is something I want to do for the sake of convenience and organization. I don't care about speed boosts or the negligible failure rate increase, I just want them to act as a single volume and I'd rather not span them and have one of the SSDs taking up space and wasting electricity until the other is full. So would it be better to set it up through BIOS, or through Windows Disk management?

 

[SkyNetRising]

So would it be better to set it up through BIOS, or through Windows Disk management?

Windows raid is more convenient. For example if your motherboard dies, it's easy to recover raid after you move drives to a different system. With BIOS raid you may have trouble recovering your data.

But again - raid 0 on SSDs makes zero sense. Raid 1 would make sense - for redundancy, but not raid 0.