GA-880GA-UD3H Win7 Raid-1 Issues

[OldPCGuy]

I have a GA-880GA-UD3H rev. 2.0 board; Athlon 240e x2; Win7 Home Premium and I can't get raid-1 to work. 

I have the OS on a 500GB Sata2 drive connected to Sata2_6.  I have two WD Red 3TB drives on Sata3_0 &  Sata3_1. 

I setup for Raid in BIOS, and assigned the drives and raid type under the Raid BIOS <Cntrl-F>.  Everything looks correct except for the Adapter Configuration - Options screen, there is a message "No Parameters Defined for Current Disk(s)..."  I defined everything I could under the raid BIOS, and Raid-1 shows on the POST screen as "functional".   

Under Win7 Disk Manager I set the drives to GPT; and assigned a drive letter to Disk 0.  When I copy files to the 3TB drive they do not mirror.  It behave likes a non-raid drive. 

I have even reloaded the OS after setting up the SB850 controller, still no luck.  What am I missing?

[Tiger]

OS is on Sata2_6 is GIGABYTE SATA2 chip which is a secondary storage device. The main SB850 is not being used for the OS. I recommend not using the GIGABYTE SATA2 chip.

You need to use one of the latest versions of the RAID drivers for drives over 2TB.

I would advise you to enable RAID for the SATA3_0/1/2/3 connectors, set OnChip SATA Type to RAID.
Connect the drive for the OS to SATA3_0.
Download the latest AMD chipset drivers.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows+8.1+-+64

Extract the file to a USB 2.0 thumb drive by clicking on it. Cancel the catalyst manager when it pops up.

Explore the folders till you find SB8xx RAID Drivers that are in the SB8XX RAID folder. You want to direct the Windows 7 installer to load the FOLDER marked for your OS->W7-64bit (similar name). You have an opportunity to load the driver (FOLDER for your OS) at the beginning of the Windows 7 installation.

After installing Windows 7 you can rerun the AMD chipset drivers and let the catalyst install manager do its thing.

Now connect the 3TB drives to SATA3_1 and SATA3_2.
Create the RAID array. In Disk Management you should be able to do a GPT format on the RAID array.

[OldPCGuy]

I would advise you to enable RAID for the SATA3_0/1/2/3 connectors, set OnChip SATA Type to RAID.
Connect the drive for the OS to SATA3_0.
Download the latest AMD chipset drivers.
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows+8.1+-+64

Extract the file to a USB 2.0 thumb drive by clicking on it. Cancel the catalyst manager when it pops up.

Explore the folders till you find SB8xx RAID Drivers that are in the SB8XX RAID folder. You want to direct the Windows 7 installer to load the FOLDER marked for your OS->W7-64bit (similar name). You have an opportunity to load the driver (FOLDER for your OS) at the beginning of the Windows 7 installation.

After installing Windows 7 you can rerun the AMD chipset drivers and let the catalyst install manager do its thing.

Now connect the 3TB drives to SATA3_1 and SATA3_2.
Create the RAID array. In Disk Management you should be able to do a GPT format on the RAID array.

I followed the above recommended steps ; I get the same result.  I see the drives under disk manager and the Raid Bios and no where else.  Only difference is I see both the boot drive and the Raid array on the POST screen.

I upgraded the BIOS to the latest release; no change. 

There must be some small detail I'm missing.  Now under Disk Manager I can set the drive to GPT but there is no option to format the drive.  Is that normal?

I don't understand how two drives plugged into a controller setup as Raid-1 can be seen by windows as two separate drives.  What is the SB850 controller doing if not controlling the drives?

[OldPCGuy]

Well I think I got it working.

No matter what I tried; new drivers, old drivers, OS load procedures, AMD updates, nothing worked.

What worked was running AMD's RaidXpert utility (which was hard to find). 

I'm not sure what it did but it somehow go the OS to see the controller or vice versa.  Then under Disk Manager I saw a single logical drive labelled as an AMD Mirror Raid0/1. I was able to set the FAT as GPT, quick format and all seemed good.

What bother me is I can't find any maintenance menus for rebuilding the array should a drive go bad.  With all it took to get it up running I'm still concerned.

Is there a way to check that both drives have mirror data?  Before I copy my sensitive data to the raid I want to make sure this raid setup is robust.