Question SATA Devices missing in SATA Raid Mode ?

[Spetsnazdan]

Good evening all;

I am attempting to add a raid setup to my existing system, and would prefer to not reinstall windows.

I've got a HP P420 Raid Controller Card with 6x 1TB WD Velociraptors in Raid 6. Its obviously not an ideal setup and my M.2 drive outperforms it haha. The drives are connected to the card which is in a PCIe x16 slot with minisas to sata spreaders.

All HDDs and the Controller appear to work as intended from my troubleshooting but I think I'm missing a setting or something obvious as I'll explain.

After setting this up I went into the BIOS and put my system in RAID mode. The system boots to Win 7 and the HP Array Software was able to put the drives in Raid 6. While my M.2 Boot drive and my raid drive are recognized in disc management, none of my sata devices (2 HDDs, 1 SSD, disc drive) are detected by the OS. I can see some of them in the bios but not device or disc management I've tried changing achi and raid settings in regedit to no avail.

Next I went in the bios and swapped to ACHI mode; the system posts and then boots into the HP P420 instead of windows; There is a line at the top of the screen that says ~ HP P420 Smart Array, Initializing ***; and then when it finishes it quickly says 1 logical drive found (before I set up the raid the number was 0) and then cuts to a black screen that occasionally flashes a cursor in the top left. Without the HP P420 the system runs normally and detects all preexisting Hard drives

Currently I have the system in ACHI mode; I'd like to get the RAID working but not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any help from someone more familiar with RAID would be appreciated.


Parts List:

• Win 7 Ult (Off topic questions or comments about why I'm still using win7 will be ignored)
• TR1900X
• AsRock X399 Fatality Professional Gaming
• R9 295x2, R9 290X (4gb)
• EVGA 1300W PSU
• 48GB Corsair Dominator Plat DDR4 3200 mhz
• 500gb Samsung 960 Evo M.2
• 3tb Seagate Barracuda, 8tb Seagate Barracuda, ~120gb ocz vertex 2.5" ssd
• HP P420 Raid Controller (1gb DDR3 Cache, battery)
• 6x 1tb WD Velociraptor HDD in Raid 6

 

[Ralston18]

This:

"I've got a HP P420 Raid Controller Card with 6x 1TB WD Velociraptors in Raid 6. Its obviously not an ideal setup and my M.2 drive outperforms it "

My underline.

The starting question is why RAID?

What are the requirements for RAID and what is expected to be gained by using RAID?

Very unlikely that there is anything to be gained via a RAID installation of any sort and, overall, using RAID is likely going to be more cumbersome, complicated, and problematic.

More information needed.

 

[Spetsnazdan]

This:

The starting question is why RAID?

Using RAID is likely going to be more cumbersome, complicated, and problematic.

Yes. Obviously the best most efficient most practical most cost effective route would be to go for a large cap M.2 drive. I'm honestly surprised at how well the drives are performing in raid according to crystal disk mark even if it's notably worse than my M.2 drive.

I've never played with Raid before and I've wanted an opportunity to play with it for awhile now. I also wanted this storage to have some degree of redundancy as its for media storage.

Regardless - against better judgement I've decided to go with a RAID array - why aren't my SATA devices being recognized by the OS?

 

[Bob.B]

Yes. Obviously the best most efficient most practical most cost effective route would be to go for a large cap M.2 drive. I'm honestly surprised at how well the drives are performing in raid according to crystal disk mark even if it's notably worse than my M.2 drive.

I've never played with Raid before and I've wanted an opportunity to play with it for awhile now. I also wanted this storage to have some degree of redundancy as its for media storage.

Regardless - against better judgement I've decided to go with a RAID array - why aren't my SATA devices being recognized by the OS?

Using a storage pool?

 

[Ralston18]

The SATA devices may not be being recognized because of some conflict with sharing.

That would involve the motherboard and other installed components.

This motherboard?

https://www.asrock.com/microsite/PCInstallationGuide/

From the link:

"A) Before installing your storage device (M.2 SSD, SATA SSD or HDD), check motherboard spec for any SATA port and M.2 slot limitation, e.g. share lanes"

Pay attention to the fine print and all caveats, etc.. Details matter.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Currently I have the system in ACHI mode; I'd like to get the RAID working but not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Any help from someone more familiar with RAID would be appreciated.

Enabling RAID switches motherboard sata controller into raid mode.
You have a separate RAID controller card.
There's no need to enable motherboard RAID, unless you want to set up RAID on motherboard connected sata drives.

You're not seeing sata drives after enabling RAID, because AMD RAID drivers need to be installed for this.

 

[DSzymborski]

Do you have actual backups for this data? RAID is a bad solution for backups, it's a solution for data availability, which is a very different thing.

If you don't have a backup solution for your data, please make sure and protect your data before you muck around with a RAID for fun. This system has a messy enough configuration already that I fear this will end very badly otherwise.

 

[Spetsnazdan]

The SATA devices may not be being recognized because of some conflict with sharing.

That would involve the motherboard and other installed components.

This motherboard?

https://www.asrock.com/microsite/PCInstallationGuide/

From the link:

"A) Before installing your storage device (M.2 SSD, SATA SSD or HDD), check motherboard spec for any SATA port and M.2 slot limitation, e.g. share lanes"

Pay attention to the fine print and all caveats, etc.. Details matter.

Its this motherboard:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming/index.asp

I haven't seen any mention of SATA and M.2 limitations; I saw the U.2 port is limited by a M.2 drive in a certain spot but otherwise nothing.

 

[Spetsnazdan]

Enabling RAID switches motherboard sata controller into raid mode.
You have a separate RAID controller card.
There's no need to enable motherboard RAID, unless you want to set up RAID on motherboard connected sata drives.

You're not seeing sata drives after enabling RAID, because AMD RAID drivers need to be installed for this.

I would prefer not to set up RAID on the motherboard connected SATA drives;

The issue I've been running into when the system is in AHCI mode is during boot the the UI for the controller pops up and initializes, and then after initializing presumably successfully (it detects the array) it just sits in the UI on a black screen with a cursor. I don't run into this issue in RAID mode for some reason.

When it initializes it has a status line at the top of the monitor that roughly says

HP P420 Smart Array, Initializing *

and then roughly

1 logical device found

and then it cuts to nothing and is seemingly unresponsive except _ occasionally blinking in the top left.

Any ideas on how to get the controller to skip this step or to proceed once this step is complete?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Check boot priority settings.
Either booting from wrong device or in wrong mode.
You get blinking underscore symbol, when booting from GPT drive in legacy mode.