Asus P9X79 PRO issue

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nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
3,772
13
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Hey all!

So I got some new SSDs to replace my current ones. I wanted to reinstall windows completely on a single SSD instead of going the raid route. I still need raid set in the BIOS though for my storage drives. The problem is, Windows 7 will not detect any drives when I set the BIOS to raid. Even when I load the drive provided by Asus, no drives show up. The only way to get any drives to show up for the Windows install is to set them to IDE. I tried doing that, and then doing the registry fix to enable AHCI, installed all drives, etc.... Set it back to raid and I get a quick BSOD and reboot. So I try setting it to AHCI, same BSOD.

I never had this problem when I first got the board and had the default BIOS dated 11/11/2011. I actually just this week loaded a BIOS that I didn't notice before dated 11/17/2011 with the bundled Asus software. It seems when I flashed this BIOS, I was no longer able to see any drives when set to RAID. I tried rolling back my BIOS and it says the file is not a valid UEFI BIOS.

I can put my old drives in and get back to Windows with raid turned on. I just can't install to any new drives or arrays. I even tried booting the installer with the working drives, and even with drivers loaded again... Nothing shows up for the install. I did shift + F10 and ran diskpart - list disk and nothing shows up. I've also tried installing from a disc and a USB drive.

Anybody have any ideas? I'm at a loss. This new BIOS essentially turned my PC in to a brick unless I reinstall with IDE and keep it at IDE.
 
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nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
3,772
13
81
thanks! going to try this one out and let you know. the asus software did not see this BIOS, nor did i see it on the product page for my mobo. only the 0802 was there.
 
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nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
3,772
13
81
no change. single drives and raid drives both not showing. with and without mobo drivers from asus' website. drives are detected in BIOS just fine, but diskpart still shows nothing except my windows install usb flash.


EDIT: it was detected in AHCI and installed fine... but afterward i set it to raid again, since my data large data is stored on a raid0, recovery mode comes up. raid is just straight up broken. i can't rollback to the bios that DID work, because my 7970s would not POST with that. that's what made me look for a new bios from the start.
 
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Diogenes2

Platinum Member
Jul 26, 2001
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Sorry this doesn't help your situation, but I started out with the P9X79 Pro, and wasn't able to set up RAID .. I brought it up in this thread at Post #212

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2205664&page=9


I installed the 0802 BIOS before I did anything else.

I installed with SATA on AHCI, but when I tried to switch to RAID, I had no luck.. I never got the RAID BIOS ( Ctrl I ) prompt during post ..

I was able to flash back to the original BIOS, 0709, but nothing changed.

When I put in a trouble ticket with Asus, they said they would look into it, but I never heard back from them..


I worked with Newegg, and they gave me a full refund in the form of a store credit, and I went with the Asrock Xtreme9 .

It's puzzling that some people seem to be having this problem and not others..
I hope you get this solved..
 
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nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
3,772
13
81
Diogenes2 said:
Sorry this doesn't help your situation, but I started out with the P9X79 Pro, and wasn't able to set up RAID .. I brought it up in this thread at Post #212

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2205664&page=9


I installed the 0802 BIOS before I did anything else.

I installed with SATA on AHCI, but when I tried to switch to RAID, I had no luck.. I never got the RAID BIOS ( Ctrl I ) prompt during post ..

I was able to flash back to the original BIOS, 0709, but nothing changed.

When I put in a trouble ticket with Asus, they said they would look into it, but I never heard back from them..


I worked with Newegg, and they gave me a full refund in the form of a store credit, and I went with the Asrock Xtreme9 .

It's puzzling that some people seem to be having this problem and not others..
I hope you get this solved..
Click to expand...

well at least i'm not alone. if i could rollback the BIOS to the 11/11/2011 one, it would be fine. the shipping BIOS is the only one that worked for me. i tried to flash the older one and it says it is not a valid UEFI. my 7970s didn't work with that BIOS anyway though...

nice to see asus not taking the matter seriously.
 
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hennessy1

Golden Member
Mar 18, 2007
1,901
5
91
Have you tried doing it with the flashback utility where you do it from the white usb port on the back?

Your also plugging them into the intel sata ports right not the marvell ones? I believe the marvell ones are for ssd caching.
 
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dajeepster

dajeepster

Golden Member
Apr 15, 2001
1,974
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nanaki333 said:
... but afterward i set it to raid again, since my data large data is stored on a raid0, recovery mode comes up. start.
Click to expand...

what screams at me is why did you have your data stored on a RAID0?

I have this board and i'm not running into any problems.. I have bios 0709 installed (or might be the one right after that.. i only have a copy of 0709 on my server)
I'm running a 6970 and 7970 in it with no problems and i have a 64gb crucial c300 drive and 16gb ddr3 (quad channel) with no problems. drive is set up as AHCI with win7 64bit.

I'm going to be redoing this system in a couple of weeks. I'll be using the ssd as a ssd cache drive and then use a 750gb momentus xt hybrid as my regular drive (cached with the SSD drive).. along with another 7970 (hopefully) and then wc it.
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
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If you want to do flashback you need to rename bios to whats shown in manual (DOS only accepts 8 characters or less) after you download it. For you this means P9X79PRO.rom on FAT32 USB 2.0 stick NAKED in root (no folder) in the WHITE slotted USB port as mentioned, and press button for 3 seconds to get it going

and the 0906 bios was released 2 weeks ago
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d_id=1&model=P9X79+PRO&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Man, theres so much wrong in this thread I wouldnt even know where to start
 
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Diogenes2

Platinum Member
Jul 26, 2001
2,151
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bankster55 said:
........

Man, theres so much wrong in this thread I wouldnt even know where to start
Click to expand...


A hint or two would be nice..

I really would have liked to have had my Asus X79 up and running, even though I'm happy with my AsRock board after all .

I would like to know how I might have done things differently, and maybe head off trouble in the future..

It sounds like you have a good handle on this stuff..
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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dajeepster said:
6710453437


trying to put an image in the thread... not having any success so here's a link
Click to expand...

No link given

Just use Win 7 snip tool/window
save as .jpg
go to imgur.com
drag and drop it to homepage
upload it
post "BBC" link (with
)
 
dajeepster

dajeepster

Golden Member
Apr 15, 2001
1,974
16
81
bankster55 said:
No link given

Just use Win 7 snip tool/window
save as .jpg
go to imgur.com
drag and drop it to homepage
upload it
post "BBC" link (with
)
Click to expand...

the link shows up if i'm logged in, but doesn't if i'm not logged in... at least for me.. :confused:

I'll have to do this when i get off of work.. in 9 hours..
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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How bout you Diogenes, would like to see what the dev man looks like in ASRock, with RAID
Same layout dajeepster did
Really curious, would appreciate
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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O.K. thnx Diogenes
And oh yeah, the ASR X9 has all those Marvel ports

As far as not being able to setup RAID on the ASUS, the foolproof way to make an INTEL RAID array is to make sure the bios boot page says force bios (not keep current) which I think was your prob. Why it was set keep current I dont know since force bios is default. Then disable all other controllers, and put both RAID drives to Intel port 1 and port 2. SATA 6 cables only, hot plug on all drives except DVD. I always get raided drives ready by secure erasing both if SSD or killdisking both if HDD. I also disable full screen logo.This assumes the RAIDED drives will have O/S. Upon boot you will get the Intel oprom screen showing BEFORE anything else, which you can hold by hitting pause key. You can then hit cntrl-I at your leisure to set up your config. Should have 2 raidable drives (no O/S non boot) hooked up.(Cleaned). You can then add all your other drives and change boot order as fits.

As far as "updating" you IRSTe driver, it should be noted that your bios version has a particular OPROM, which you can see in upper right of Intel RAID screen. During Win 7 install, it will look at oprom in bios and if the "add driver" USB has a substantially higher version you will be given a non matching error. The 3 series of RSTe has been shipping (up to)3002003 (up to)3003020 and now (up to)3017016. You must make note of your current bios oprom vers. If you try a later RSTe you may have Win 7 install issues, or if you use current or leseer vers for your bios, you will be able to update IN WINDOWS later, but will have no useage of the updates. So its best when updating RSTe to first update BIOS and check which oprom showing. In other words do a Jan 2011 bios update, check new oprom number, rerun Intel chipset utility, and then update RST to something equivalent or LOWER.

The OP was changing IDE AHCI and RAID back and forth which is a no no. He was getting BSOD's which is correct - thats what happens. There are registry tweaks to do this, but this was for RST, not RSTe. MS has several KB articles on when you change a HDD that WAS IDE and THOSE probs. Thats why I always wipe drives in RAID, and if they were part of a RAID system to "reset disk to non RAID" the volume first or they stick in that mode rather strongly.
Think clean and fresh everytime, everywhere.
28b5vfa.jpg


FWIW in the not too distant future I will have to set up identical RAID and single AHCI SSD's and try the dif modes to see which gives better perf. Which "f6" driver pak used determines which mode you will be in - or if the "S" paks even install?
AHCIS
iASTORS (RAID) SCU
AHCIA
iASTORA (RAID)
SCU (SCSI control Unit) mini port (by itself - no AHCI)

Its actually a good idea to open the .inf files you are about to put on USB stick to see whats going on - vers date and modality
The original X79 was supposed to have many more SATA 6 ports depending on model, but they cut them because of probs. 4 of those ports were supposed to be SAS. I THINK they are included in the RSTe driver
package IN CASE they are initiated in upcoming X77
mobo. I see nothing about SAS in the X79 chipset diagram. This may be a prob since only certain drives are compatible with SAS, so if you load the "S" F6 pak, your drive just might not work.
And according to this review of the ECS X79 - they claim they have the original "hidden" INTEL SAS ports. Crazy stuff.
http://www.techspot.com/review/484-intel-x79-motherboard-roundup/page4.html
 
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bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
1,124
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thnx 4 the thnx
>since you posted the screenie I asked for
>and since you came back to thank me
I am now making a better thought out (long) thread on another forum with lots of screenshots, and when I finish I will PM you with the link
 
dajeepster

dajeepster

Golden Member
Apr 15, 2001
1,974
16
81
i started messing with the bluetooth on this board... it sucks... royally.

same bluetooth headset.

works great with my smart phone all around the house. I leave my phone in the computer room and i can walk around the house and the headset works great.

but...
If i have the bluetooth headset connected to the computer... i get lossed data i.e. the music is really choppy... and that's just sitting four feet from the computer... if i get 10 feet away from the computer, i get disconnected.
 
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nanaki333

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2002
3,772
13
81
dajeepster said:
what screams at me is why did you have your data stored on a RAID0?
Click to expand...

it's so i can still store massive amounts of files. there's nothing i NEED on my arrays. everything is backed up to my NAS. i prefer running raid SSDs because it's cheaper than buying a single 512GB (until recently anyway). the mechanical drives are not necessary for the reinstall, but i would still like to use my SSDs in raid0. i use tonytrim to keep them fresh, so i'm not worried about TRIM.
 
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