Trouble trying RAID Drives

[shazrt1]

For some reason i can only RAID 4 of the 6 SSD hard drives i have, i don't understand why it says i can RAID up to 10 drives, all the drives are 240 gig SSD , 2 of them are Kingston , 2 others are Silicone Power, 1 is Samsung and the other is Scan-disk, all are 240 gig drives, But for some reason my machine only see's the two Kingston and the 2 silicone power drives, when i go to set up RAID under control F, system info is, windows 7 64bit , As-Rock 990fx Extreme 9 and 8 core 9590 possessor and trying to do RAID 0

 

[USAFRet]

Which RAID level, and why?

 

[shazrt1]

RAID 0 and for storage space

 

[USAFRet]

RAID 0 and for storage space

RAID 0 with 4 or 6 SSD's.

That is a recipe for full failure, with no benefit at all.

4 x 240GB drives + RAID 0 = 960GB drive space.
4 x 240GB drives + no RAID = 960GB drive space.

Add in the real possibility of losing all the data across all drives....if any of the drives dies, or the RAID controller burps...all is lost.

SSD + RAID 0? In the vast majority of use cases, zero performance benefit.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html


The only benefit might be having a single drive letter for all those drives. But the downfalls far outweigh that.

My main system is 5 drives, all SSD. No RAID in sight.
The OS and software has gotten really good at managing data on multiple drives.

 

[shazrt1]

Ive had the 4 original drives on RAID 0 for the last 4 years without a single issue or performance loss, in fact i have all the drives installed right now as single drives and cant tell a single difference between being on RAID and being single, just trying to make one big drive out of all these drives which is what RAID was meant to do, i don't have $700 to fork over for just 1 drive as well, and i didn't make this post to get feed back on why i should and shouldn't use 6 drives and about failure i'm simply asking why cant my system see the other 2 drives in RAID

 

[Rogue Leader]

For some reason i can only RAID 4 of the 6 SSD hard drives i have, i don't understand why it says i can RAID up to 10 drives, all the drives are 240 gig SSD , 2 of them are Kingston , 2 others are Silicone Power, 1 is Samsung and the other is Scan-disk, all are 240 gig drives, But for some reason my machine only see's the two Kingston and the 2 silicone power drives, when i go to set up RAID under control F, system info is, windows 7 64bit , As-Rock 990fx Extreme 9 and 8 core 9590 possessor and trying to do RAID 0

RAID 0 6 drives with 3 of them being sketchy brands (Silicone Power and Scan Disk), you must really not care about your data. If even 1 of those drives fails your whole array is shot and you're out of luck.

Is the system seeing the drives at all (even before you go into RAID setup)? Your Motherboard has 8 SATA ports but only 6 of them Support RAID. Its likely your other 2 drives aren't connected to the correct ports.

This is honestly one of the most dangerous RAID setups I've ever seen and for 0 benefit. Use the drives individually.

Ive had the 4 original drives on RAID 0 for the last 4 years without a single issue or performance loss, in fact i have all the drives installed right now as single drives and cant tell a single difference between being on RAID and being single, just trying to make one big drive out of all these drives which is what RAID was meant to do, i don't have $700 to fork over for just 1 drive as well, and i didn't make this post to get feed back on why i should and shouldn't use 6 drives and about failure i'm simply asking why cant my system see the other 2 drives in RAID

Not really. RAID was meant to improve performance and/or provide data redundancy in the world of hard drives. Its become increasingly irrelevant in the world of SSDs despite being dangerously repurposed as you are trying to do.

 

[USAFRet]

"RAID 0" is meant to enhance performance. Which it doesn't do with SSD's, as you've seen.

Disregarding the RAID thing, are all 6 drives seen in the BIOS and elsewhere?

 

[shazrt1]

yes all 6 drives are seen in BIOS and on windows 7 only place the 6 drives Dont show up are in the RAID configuration (control F) during boot, it will some reason only keep showing the 4 original drives i had set up on RAID 0 when i first bought everything 4 years ago, i have reset and cleared the Bios, wiped zeros to the 4 drives and set them back factory new, still only sees the 2 Kingston and the 2 SP drives

 

[shazrt1]

No i really dont care about data, this is set up as a gaming system with windows 7 64 bit ultimate, just has about 800 gigs of games

 

[Rogue Leader]

yes all 6 drives are seen in BIOS and on windows 7 only place the 6 drives Dont show up are in the RAID configuration (control F) during boot, it will some reason only keep showing the 4 original drives i had set up on RAID 0 when i first bought everything 4 years ago, i have reset and cleared the Bios, wiped zeros to the 4 drives and set them back factory new, still only sees the 2 Kingston and the 2 SP drives

Because, again your last 2 drives are connected to the wrong ports. 2 of your SATA ports are not supported by the onboard RAID controller of that motherboard. You need to plug them into the other 2 ports you have.

 

[USAFRet]

yes all 6 drives are seen in BIOS and on windows 7 only place the 6 drives Dont show up are in the RAID configuration (control F) during boot, it will some reason only keep showing the 4 original drives i had set up on RAID 0 when i first bought everything 4 years ago, i have reset and cleared the Bios, wiped zeros to the 4 drives and set them back factory new, still only sees the 2 Kingston and the 2 SP drives

Then, however you set up the RAID the first time..you need to undo that completely.
Start from zero, creating a NEW RAID array.

It's only showing you 4 because you can't just add drives to an existing RAID 0.

 

[shazrt1]

already done that multiply times i have deleted the RAID array reset and even done one BIOS update which reset the entire mother board!

 

[Rogue Leader]

already done that multiply times i have deleted the RAID array reset and even done one BIOS update which reset the entire mother board!

For the 3rd time, you're using the wrong SATA ports. 2 of your ports are not supported by the RAID controller.

 

[shazrt1]

Motherboard has 8 ports 6 of which are controlled by the AMD RAID controller, that's the 6 ports these drives are plugged into and i have tried moving the cables to other ports, no joy! As-Rock 990fx extreme 9

 

[shazrt1]

right now the 6 drives are plugged to SATA ports 1-6 and my other two 500 gig ssd's are on ports 7-8

 

[Rogue Leader]

Motherboard has 8 ports 6 of which are controlled by the AMD RAID controller, that's the 6 ports these drives are plugged into and i have tried moving the cables to other ports, no joy! As-Rock 990fx extreme 9

And when you go to the Logical Drive Create Menu you only see 4 of the 6 drives?

What is possible is that the other 2 drives may be substantially different enough to cause the RAID controller to not read them (despite being the same size). Can you try connecting 2 known working and the 2 new drives and see what happens?

 

[shazrt1]

correct it keeps showing only the 2 Kingston drives and the 2 silicone power drives, it will not show the other Two 240 drives which are a scan disk 240 and a Muskin 240 and yes if i unplug the Kingston drives and the silicone drives, now RAID see's the muskin and the scan-disk, its almost like i can only use up to 4 drives in RAID, i have even tried plugging back in the Kingston drives, the muskin drives and only 1 of the other 240 drives, and it still only shows the Kingston and SP drives, but again Windows and the BIOS can see all 6 of the 240 drives as well as the other 2 500 gig drives on ports 7-8

 

[Rogue Leader]

correct it keeps showing only the 2 Kingston drives and the 2 silicone power drives, it will not show the other Two 240 drives which are a scan disk 240 and a Muskin 240 and yes if i unplug the Kingston drives and the silicone drives, now RAID see's the muskin and the scan-disk, its almost like i can only use up to 4 drives in RAID, i have even tried plugging back in the Kingston drives, the muskin drives and only 1 of the other 240 drives, and it still only shows the Kingston and SP drives, but again Windows and the BIOS can see all 6 of the 240 drives as well as the other 2 500 gig drives on ports 7-8

Will the RAID see 2 Kingston and the Scan Disk and Mushkin 240?

RAID however uses a lot of system resources. Do you have a lot of USB devices plugged in? How many GPUs? Do you have GPUs and a sound card as well?

 

[shazrt1]

I have 8 core @5.1ghz , quad crossfire, 64gigs memory,all liquid cooling, and yes i have keyboard mouse on USB and a soundblaster card with on board audio shutoff! on digital fiber optic cable for sound to THX speakers yes Raid will see any 4 combination of drives for some stupid reason!

 

[Rogue Leader]

I have 8 core @5.1ghz , quad crossfire, 64gigs memory,all liquid cooling, and yes i have keyboard mouse on USB and a soundblaster card with on board audio shutoff! on digital fiber optic cable for sound to THX speakers yes Raid will see any 4 combination of drives for some stupid reason!

Have you gone into UEFI BIOS and set all 6 Ports to RAID? Its under "Storage Configuration". if any are set to AHCI then they won't pick up in RAID configurator. Also make sure you set SATA IDE Combined mode to DISABLED in that same menu

 

[shazrt1]

let me check that, that's one setting i cant be sure of!

 

[shazrt1]

SATA Mode = RAID
On Board RAID 3tb + Unlocker = Legacy Rom
SATA IDE combine mode = enabled
As Media Sata 3 mode = AHCI
Sata Boot Rom = Disable

that's how its set right now!

 

[Rogue Leader]

SATA Mode = RAID
On Board RAID 3tb + Unlocker = Legacy Rom
SATA IDE combine mode = enabled
As Media Sata 3 mode = AHCI
Sata Boot Rom = Disable

that's how its set right now!

SATA IDE combine mode = enabled

Needs to be Disabled or it wont work

 

[shazrt1]

ok i will do that a report back