X99 chipset has 10 SATA ports but every thing I can find says only 6 drives allowed for raid set up

[badgeking]

trying to find out if this is correct. have all data backed up and waiting for my asus x99 deluxe and 5960k to arrive. want to get things planed so I can get the set up right the first time.

 

[millwright]

Only 6 are on the CPU, so yes only 6 HD in a RAID.
The other 4 are on a separate chip that can't be RAIDed

 

[Pinhedd]

trying to find out if this is correct. have all data backed up and waiting for my asus x99 deluxe and 5960k to arrive. want to get things planed so I can get the set up right the first time.

The X99 PCH itself exposes 10 SATA ports. Many motherboards will include additional SATA controllers which are connected to the PCH via the PCH's PCIe 2.0 lanes.

The X99 PCH can be used in conjunction with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology ROM to configure the PCH SATA ports in a raid configuration.

The limit of the total number of installed drives is the lesser of 10 and the number of exposed ports, but there are other limits which apply on a per-RAID-volume basis. These limits are:

RAID-0: 6 drives maximum

RAID-10: 4 drives only

RAID-5: minimum 3 drives

So while a single RAID-0 volume cannot span more than 6 drives, it should be possible to construct a pair of 5-drive RAID-0 volumes on a motherboard that has all 10 of the PCH ports connected.

 

[chodamoyer]

I am having trouble getting raid with the intels rapid storage technology. I used to just select raid and then be able to hit "control-I" at bios load to get into the chipset and configure raid via an old school bios. with my x99 deluxe I can select a raid but it seems it's software raid and not a hardware set up ??? I am notthe most experienced at raid but i'd like to be able to get a raid hardware array where i hit control + I at bios and manually configure the drives. Does anyone know if x99 has hardware raid? or is it just via the ueiff bios and or the IRST software.

IMO hardware raid gets the better benchmarks than software raid.

 

[Pinhedd]

I am having trouble getting raid with the intels rapid storage technology. I used to just select raid and then be able to hit "control-I" at bios load to get into the chipset and configure raid via an old school bios. with my x99 deluxe I can select a raid but it seems it's software raid and not a hardware set up ??? I am notthe most experienced at raid but i'd like to be able to get a raid hardware array where i hit control + I at bios and manually configure the drives. Does anyone know if x99 has hardware raid? or is it just via the ueiff bios and or the IRST software.

IMO hardware raid gets the better benchmarks than software raid.

Intel's chipsets do not have hardware raid. What they have is a firmware-assisted software raid that allows a software RAID volume to be bootable

EDIT: I forgot to mention that with new UEFI based motherboards the user has the option of BIOS and UEFI RST ROMs. The BIOS ROM is entered by pressing CTRL+I when prompted during POST, but the UEFI ROM is a part of the UEFI setting environment and can be accessed through the regular UEFI settings menus.

 

[spooky2th]

There should be an option at the beginning of windows install, to load the RAID drivers.

 

[chodamoyer]

I got the pre bios raid after I hit the clear cmos after a bad overclock. Must have been some setting I clicked on that was forcing AHCI mode blocking the hardware raid to load. I might end up reinstalling windows on the raid setting even thought I won't be actually raid my windows boot drive. I only raid 0 my scratch disks.

so bottom line the x99 deluxe does have hardware raid if you set it in the bios and then see the hard drives load and hit contrl I prior to bios loading to get your typical hardware raid set up.

I will post later to let you know how many maximum drives I could get in raid. I'm guessing 6.

 

[chodamoyer]

After re-installing windows with my drives in the RAID mode, the x99 deluxe asus board has an official of 10 sata ports of which only 6 are in the intel chipset and the other 4 are from asmedia.

ONLY THE 6 sata ports from the intel chipset can be part of a raid. The other 4 ports on the asmedia chipset cannot be part of a raid.


When I finally was able to resolve my issues via a clear cmos and placement of the bios into raid mode, I was able to get the raid controller to load prior to bios and show my drives with the white and green text and offer a control +I button option to raid drives. In that mode It only shows drives that are connected to the intel chipset ports and mentions max of 6 drives in a raid combo. Once I made my raid selection I was able to re-install windows and boot up normally with the board in raid mode and not ahci.

so 6 ports/drives for raid is all you get, unless you install a pci raid card then you can go ballz out if 6 drives doesn't go ballz out for you enough as it is.