RAID on GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3

[xlink]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help. I'm trying to get raid working on a new GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 but I'm having some weird problems. I have an Intel X25-V 40G SSD and an Optical drive plugged in. I have 4 other HDD's that will be added later and put into a raid 5.

The first thing I tried was plugging in the SSD and ODD to the SATA 3 ports. I have the PCH SATA Control Mode set to "RAID(XHD)" and the XHD option Disabled. With this setup I am able to begin the Win7 install but when I get to selecting the hard drive to install windows on the SSD is showing as not being available because "this computers hardware may no support botting to this disk". I tried loading the SATA Raid pre-install drivers from Gigabytes website but that did not help.

The second thing I tried was to plug the SSD into a SATA 2 port. Strangely enough, this worked and Win7 recognized the drive. After installation was complete I shut down and plugged the SSD back into a SATA 3 port. At this point I get a disk boot failure.

The obvious thing here would be to leave the SSD plugged into a sata 2 port but I will have 5 drives on this system and 1 optical drive. It doesn't make sense that I cannot use the sata 3 port for the SSD (OS). I also noticed that I never get the option to launch the Intel Raid Manager during post. There is no pause to allow Ctrl-I to be selected. It's as if the BIOS is treating the raid as AHCI and bypassing the intel raid manager.

Any suggestions???

[absic]

hi there,

First off move the ODD to one of the SATA2 ports.
The disk failure BOOT warning is probably because the system is looking for the SSD on the SATA2 ports and you have moved it. Go into BIOS and reset the BOOT Priority so that the SSD is the first device and hopefully that will sort that problem.

[xlink]

Thanks absic. ODD is on a sata 2 port and the SSD is showing at the top of the boot order list. Still a boot failure.

The part that doesn't make sense is the Win7 install saying that the OS can't be installed on the SSD when it's plugged into a sata 3 port even when I load the sata raid drivers. I have never seen this before.

I also own two other gigabyte boards (P35 and X58) which have a raid setup. The SSD is actually from the P35 board and I had no issues enabling raid and installing Win7 so I don't think the SSD is the problem.

[absic]

Did you secure erase the SSD before using it in this build?

[xlink]

I stand corrected. I just swapped out the SSD for a 160G mechanical drive I had lying around and the Win7 install did not have any issues with this drive. I'll secure erase the SSD and give it another try.

Thanks

[xlink]

Wonderful, now I'm running into issues secure erasing the SSD because "ATA security is enabled". Looks like this has been a problem for other people as well. I'll have to work on that before I get back to the install. Looks like you called it right about the SSD absic. Thanks

[Aussie Allan]

    xlink

  Hit the Intel Forum this will have the best data base for secure erase procedures .... you could also do a dummy install to the other Drive, to use as the master (C) drive to do the erase of the SSD.

  Aussie Allan

[xlink]

Went ahead and completed the install on the regular HDD then plugged in the 4 other drives and was able to get into the raid setup. I'll have to deal with the SSD later but what a difference it is going from an SSD to a 2.5" 5200RPM drive.

Thanks for the help!

[Aussie Allan]

  Pleasure !

  Aussie Allan