After you have created a raid volume on the intel controller >2tb. when restarting the computer with win7 x64 dvd in the drive, you will see the prompt 'press any key to boot cd/dvd', even when there are no other boot options.
This is a quirk of efi boards and x64 setup which will see the efi boot manager as another boot option.
If you miss or ignore this prompt, when you get to installing f6 driver to make the volume visible, you will find that you cannot create a primary partition greater than 2tb.
If you simply click next, when windows has finished installing, the C drive will only be 2tb in size. Any space over 2tb is lost.
But it gets worse, if you have create a partition or clicked next to install windows, you will find that simply rebooting and restarting win setup will not fix the problem. At this point you are stuck with [at best] 2 unpartitioned volumes, with seemingly no way to roll the 2tb volume and the lost space volume back into a single volume.
The only way out is to go back to the intel raid setup [ctrl-I] and choose option 3 - reset disks to non-raid and then re-create the array.
Do
not use option 2 to delete the array, I have found that disk 0 will still not be in a correct and stable state if you only delete the array.
If the 'press any key...' prompt is missed or ignored, creating partitons or clicking next to install windows [which automatically creates partitions] is the cut-off point between survival and death!
If you restart setup before creating partitions, you survive. If you have created partitions, your dead and have to go back to square one to recover.
The DX79SR Intel board does not suffer this fate. On that board, if you ignore the prompt, it will simply return a message "no bootable drive found" and you simply restart again.
But on the Assassin board [and maybe others] ignoring/missing the prompt can have fatal but recoverable consequernces.
So while it is a bug with this boards bios, it has a workaround - pay attention to the prompt and press a key. If you miss it, ctrl-alt-del your way back to restart [or power off and on again]
Have lodged this with Gigabyte, will update with their response.
