Question How do I enable and set up RAID with this mobo?

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
Since you disabled VMD, the VMD drivers aren't required anymore so uninstall them from Windows and install the regular RST drivers.

No no, I enabled VMD. Like, I told it to map VMD to the SATA controllers or something to that effect. That's what made things show up in the BIOS RST menu.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: igor_kavinski
Jul 27, 2020
16,282
10,320
106
If it's all above the OS level, who cares what Windows is doing?
It is above the OS level but the BIOS isn't doing any sort of emulation to make the array look like a standard drive to Windows. Without emulation, you need drivers. The VMD drivers won't support regular RST features I think.
 

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
Does what you're saying about the drivers still apply even if it spent ZERO time setting up/building the array in BIOS?
 
Jul 27, 2020
16,282
10,320
106
Also: I think I should only be installing stuff on the Asus mobo's support page, just to be safe, even if it's the older version of stuff.
Nah. Mobo vendors rarely update their pages. You got a Raptor Lake CPU. You need the Raptor Lake drivers.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
3,410
1,144
106
Does what you're saying about the drivers still apply even if it spent ZERO time setting up/building the array in BIOS?
It's not going to take any time since the drives were formatted. It's just making a new array w/ 0 data.

There are 3 different ways to Raid....
OS ./ softraid . mdadm
HW - MOBO / RST - OS independent
HW - card / controller - OS independent n / slower to boot due to the card needing to POST as well

Doing this though for ~500GB seems a bit silly other than learning about how it works. Investing in SSD's at least could give more speed comparable to ~1/3 of an NVME for the OS if that's what's being used. Sure combining the 2 ATA drives will potentially get ~300MB/s out of them but, any data on them is susceptible to loss if either drive fails. Loss doesn't seem to be a priority here though since you blew away the drives and got them working again.
 
  • Like
Reactions: igor_kavinski
Jul 27, 2020
16,282
10,320
106
Yeah. This is the dumbest RAID type (striping) you can use :D

No surprise that the chipset RAID controller has to do basically nothing to create the array :)
 

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
It's not going to take any time since the drives were formatted. It's just making a new array w/ 0 data.

There are 3 different ways to Raid....
OS ./ softraid . mdadm
HW - MOBO / RST - OS independent
HW - card / controller - OS independent n / slower to boot due to the card needing to POST as well

Doing this though for ~500GB seems a bit silly other than learning about how it works. Investing in SSD's at least could give more speed comparable to ~1/3 of an NVME for the OS if that's what's being used. Sure combining the 2 ATA drives will potentially get ~300MB/s out of them but, any data on them is susceptible to loss if either drive fails. Loss doesn't seem to be a priority here though since you blew away the drives and got them working again.

And which of the 3 is my situation? The second one, right?

Also: these are old drives I'm using for extra storage, and I'm doing RAID-0 for fun. Because I'm crazy. I already have nVMEs in my system for actual stuff.
 
Jul 27, 2020
16,282
10,320
106
There's nothing on the drives and worst case scenario, I'm sure you can re-install Windows if it gets borked. Install the latest drivers, will ya??? :D
 

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
There's nothing on the drives and worst case scenario, I'm sure you can re-install Windows if it gets borked. Install the latest drivers, will ya??? :D

I'm just highly procedural. I like to understand exactly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Like, even if it works, if I don't understand why, it will bother me to no end.

If me pairing a corporate-tier motherboard with a 13600K, 64 GB RAM, and a 4070 FE wasn't indication enough, I'm sorta not typical. :p

All this being said, I probably will shortly.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
3,410
1,144
106
And which of the 3 is my situation? The second one, right?

Also: these are old drives I'm using for extra storage, and I'm doing RAID-0 for fun. Because I'm crazy. I already have nVMEs in my system for actual stuff.
Yup.

R0 is pure speed / bonding of drives to make a larger space. Mostly you'll want this sort of thing for faster load times of data that is backed up somewhere else. Sometimes you'll see it with idiots bonding NVME drives together for outrageous speeds which are totally unnecessary. Even the most demanding games won't be maxing things out after the initial load to the GPU. Hell, even my game only hits about 100MB/s of drive speed when loading. Now, when I copy data between the 2 NVME drives I can push them to ~1.5GB/s which is more of a bus limitation / windows issue of moving the data and potentially a bottleneck of the PCH since one drive is on the CPU and the other isn't. I can get closer to the full potential speed though by using TB4 and about double the throughput by copying in a multithread fashion.
 
  • Like
Reactions: igor_kavinski

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
3,410
1,144
106
I'm just highly procedural. I like to understand exactly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Like, even if it works, if I don't understand why, it will bother me to no end.

If me pairing a corporate-tier motherboard with a 13600K, 64 GB RAM, and a 4070 FE wasn't indication enough, I'm sorta not typical. :p
It's obvious. No one would do that other than to be cheap or get frustrated,.

How does the 4070 like the board in game though? Seems it would be throttled a bit by the board.
 

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
Yup.

R0 is pure speed / bonding of drives to make a larger space. Mostly you'll want this sort of thing for faster load times of data that is backed up somewhere else. Sometimes you'll see it with idiots bonding NVME drives together for outrageous speeds which are totally unnecessary. Even the most demanding games won't be maxing things out after the initial load to the GPU. Hell, even my game only hits about 100MB/s of drive speed when loading. Now, when I copy data between the 2 NVME drives I can push them to ~1.5GB/s which is more of a bus limitation / windows issue of moving the data and potentially a bottleneck of the PCH since one drive is on the CPU and the other isn't. I can get closer to the full potential speed though by using TB4 and about double the throughput by copying in a multithread fashion.

Dude trust me I know. I've been using RAID-0 with these 2 exact drives on my old/previous rig for years and years.

I'm going to be experimenting with these. Besides, I think it's neat to have RAID-0 with 2 x 10,000rpm drives nowadays, because like, no one else does it.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: igor_kavinski

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
Nah. Mobo vendors rarely update their pages. You got a Raptor Lake CPU. You need the Raptor Lake drivers.

Off Intel's site:

"Note: Intel recommends that end users utilize driver updates provided by their system manufacturer/provider or via Windows* Update to eliminate the potential impact caused by loading non-customized drivers. System manufacturers regularly customize Intel generic drivers to meet the needs of their specific system design. In such cases, use of the Intel generic driver update is not recommended."
 

Turbonium

Platinum Member
Mar 15, 2003
2,109
48
91
There's a reason for that. ;)

Yes, people are boring.

No seriously, let me have my fun.

I mean, like I said, I have 2 very solid gen4 nVMEs for actual stuff. I got the 2 WDC 10k drives for shits and giggles, from my last system.
 
Jul 27, 2020
16,282
10,320
106
Off Intel's site:

"Note: Intel recommends that end users utilize driver updates provided by their system manufacturer/provider or via Windows* Update to eliminate the potential impact caused by loading non-customized drivers. System manufacturers regularly customize Intel generic drivers to meet the needs of their specific system design. In such cases, use of the Intel generic driver update is not recommended."
That's for the desktops from big OEMs like Dell, HP etc. They may customize their hardware to such an extent that special drivers may be required.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
3,410
1,144
106
I've been pondering doing an AIC w/ 4 x NVME to replace my HDD's but, can't really stomach the $1200 or so it would cost to do it. Though prices keep coming down considerably. I think everyone is clearing out existing stock for something new in the pipeline.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BRYQH443/ - $180 card / 4 drives / kind oof slow at 1.5GB/s per drive
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KFX8287 - $289 card / 4 drives / 6500<B/s aggregate speed / slightly faster
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BZMK1LWS/ - $205/drive as they don't need to be uber high end with the bottleneck of the cards

Not exactly sure why prices are cratering on the drives though recently as they've dropped ~60% or more in some cases yet the 8TB options are still ~$800/ea unless you go SATA and then it's ~$450.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
3,410
1,144
106
No seriously, let me have my fun.
I don't care what you do if it makes you happy. The reasons that come to mind would be noise / heat / power consumption. If you could mount the system to the back of your chair you'd have a massage chair.

We all tend to do odd things when we get bored with the tech as it's designed and do funny things to it at that point that others don't. For instance my R10 w/ 5 drives instead of 4 with one acting as a hot standby. I figured if it's in the system already it should serve some purpose at least other than adding to the power bill.

Code:
Personalities : [raid10] [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md0 : active raid10 sda1[6] sdb1[3] sdd1[2] sde1[5] sdc1[4]
      19534735360 blocks super 1.2 512K chunks 2 near-copies [5/5] [UUUUU]
      bitmap: 0/73 pages [0KB], 131072KB chunk

unused devices: <none>