Setting up RAID sets on GA-P67A-UD5

[2000mr2sc]

Here's my scenario

1 640GB drive (system) attached to SATA III
1 DVD drive attached to SATA III

Installed Windows 7, all is good in the world.

Now I'm ready to add 2 pairs of 1TB drives in RAID0, all is NOT good in the world. Attached the 4 1TB drives to the remaining Sata II ports. Changed BIOS from IDE (oops, should have been AHCI but whatever) to RAID. Rebooted, CTRL-I to Intel raid management. Configured 2 x 2TB RAID0 sets. Left system drive 640GB alone. Went back to main BIOS, can see both RAID sets (by name) and the 640GB drive, set 640GB as primary boot device.

However, system will no longer boot (operating system not found.) Hmm..really? Change back to IDE instead of RAID in Integrated Peripherals/SATA control mode and machine boots again, but of course the RAID controller is now disabled.

What am I missing here, what is the sequence of events and settings to configure an existing standalone boot drive and add RAID sets to the system? I realize I will probably need to install drivers for the RAID controller in Windows but I can't even get there as the original system drive either isn't active after switching to RAID controller or not the primary boot device.

TIA!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Firstly can I just enquire as to whether your board is a B3 version ?

[hapdigital]

Yes it is a B3. he's helping me out with my gear. thanks

[Dark Mantis]

That's ok then.

Is there any reason why yopu want to use the RAID0 as backup drives and the 640 as the boot drive. It would seem to be counter intuitive. The RAID will actually be faster than your 640GB drive.

[hapdigital]

Will use them for video editing scratch and project drives.  but any reason why windows wont boot up after doing what he stated above?

[Dark Mantis]

I think that probably if you do it that way it is fine for a boot drive but maybe confusing things. You could try setting up the raid in Windows via Disk Management instead.

[2000mr2sc]

Thanks for the responses thus far. To clarify, there is no point in using the Intel RAID management app out of the BIOS with regards to performance? Is there no RAID controller/intelligence/cpu-offloading going on with the Gigabyte mobo? If so, what's the point of including "RAID" capability on the motherboard unless it is only there to provide software based (via drivers) RAIDs to operating systems which do not intrinsically handle RAID?