HELP me: 990FXA-UD7 with bios F6 fails to post completely with SB950 RAID enabled..

[wasserkool]

So I am trying to configure two Intel 510 SSDs in RAID 0 on my gigabyte 990fxa-ud7 motherboard that has the AMD SB950 chipset.

There are altogether 6 SATA 6.0 gbps ports on the motherboard that is controlled by the AMD chipset. But the motherboard will fail to book if I enable RAID with the following setup:

P = Port

p1 - Intel SSD (Set to RAID0)
p2 - Intel SSD (Set to RAID 0)
p3
p4 OCZ MaxIOPS - My windows Boot drive.
p5
p6

I am guessing the built in chipset RAID functionality does not allow you to mix and match drives? Does it mean that if I want to run RAID 0 off the AMD chipset the remaining port must be unused?

I did some more tinkering by removing all other SATA drives from the SB950 ports and just left the two Intel SSDs on port 0 and 1, went to the bios to enable the RAID functionality and BAM....the motherboard refuse to post and spits out some garbled message. I have to reset the CMOS everytime I do this......I am so lost lol...

Everything works fine and dandy if I leave the SATA setting as AHCI mode though. I've also installed the RAIDXpert software and logged into the admin page but it is not detecting any of the drives plugged into the system..

[gOtVoltage]

If using raid 0 try using

p0 = SSD
p1 = SSD
these are the first two ports..

.they will be on the same conector tower .

Sata 0 and Sata 1 ( p0 and P1) will be the two lowest ports on your mobo.

Last put your boot drive and sata optical drive (DVD) on Sata 3 and then 4 excetra.

Clear mobo to defaults , set SB Sata to Raid, make shure you First boot drive or Boot up device is your Raiiad 0,, This should say the Name of your SCSI IDE Raid setup as first boot.

Also make shure you are not using Sata Raid5 .. if sata port 4 or 5 is used it must be Enabled to raid and you should be using 2 or 4 drives. You Should not even need 4/5 enable if you are using two drives for raid 0 and one dvd player 0/1/2 sata connectors.

[gOtVoltage]

If using raid 0 try using

p0 = SSD
p1 = SSD
these are the first two ports..

.they will be on the same conector tower .

Sata 0 and Sata 1 ( p0 and P1) will be the two lowest ports on your mobo.



0/1/2 sata connectors for your three drives.

[wasserkool]

THANK you for the feedback - I am going to try it right now and it seems I got my SATA port numbering mixed up. AS you can see from the image below:



The two SSDs in RAID 0 should go on the bottom two ports and my OS Boot drive on the other ports? I am not installing Windows on RAID arrays but rather it is sitting on a individual SSD. I guess I can hook the OS drive to the other ports and the board will boot up fine?

[gOtVoltage]

you can Go with one of the middle ports .

If you use port ( 4/5 )which will be one of the (top two Black ports) you will want to set SB Sata ports 4/5 to AHCI for your OS drive (fastest performance with one disk..

your Raid 0 will always run seperate and you do not use any of the top grey ports.

[wasserkool]

I just tried again... put the two SSDs onto port 0 and 1, enabled RAID in the BIOS, reboot and the following came up:

"What? 40:0eh <> 40:13h?"

[wasserkool]

you can Go with one of the middle ports .

If you use port ( 4/5 )which will be one of the (top two Black ports) you will want to set SB Sata ports 4/5 to AHCI for your OS drive (fastest performance with one disk..

your Raid 0 will always run seperate and you do not use any of the top grey ports.

Hey thanks again...but I am a bit confused with the port setups. Currently I have it this way:

p0 - Intel SSD
p1 - Intel SSD
p2 - OCZ SSD (WINDOWS OS drive)
p3 - Corsair F120 SSD
p4 - DVD ROM
p5
I guess the above configuration is not possible because once I enabled RAID, the chipset will use port p0 to p3? So in order to make RAID work I have use the following config:

p0 - Intel SSD
p1 - Intel SSD
p2 - EMPTY
p3 - EMPTY
p4 - DVD ROM
p5 - OCZ SSD (WINDOWS OS drive)

[BeepBeep2]

I just tried again... put the two SSDs onto port 0 and 1, enabled RAID in the BIOS, reboot and the following came up:

"What? 40:0eh <> 40:13h?"

Ex.
_ _ _
_ _ _

You are using the left two right? Plug your other drive into the bottom right one.

You shouldn't get a message like that...unless the board is malfuntioning O_o

[wasserkool]

Ex.
_ _ _
_ _ _

You are using the left two right? Plug your other drive into the bottom right one.

You shouldn't get a message like that...unless the board is malfuntioning O_o

Huh..what do you mean? I am using the port p0 and p1 for the two SSDs that I want to RAID and double checked that it is the correct the port. Other than this issue, the board runs fine and is very stable though.

[BeepBeep2]

What I'm saying is to put the two intel SSD's on the bottom two ports, leave the middle empty and OCZ + DVD on the top 2 in the group of six, just like you have in your edited post.

You shouldn't have gotten that message regardless, JBOD works (or is supposed to) in RAID mode.

[gOtVoltage]

p4/p5 may need to be set as IDE....which is your sata 4/5 Enable IDE mode .

In boot menu your first boot device should be your drive with OS not the Raid .

the way you havve it below is a common set up . it should work.

p0 - Intel SSD
p1 - Intel SSD
p2 - EMPTY
p3 - EMPTY
p4 - DVD ROM
p5 - OCZ SSD (WINDOWS OS drive)

[wasserkool]

Ex.
_ _ _
_ _ _

You are using the left two right? Plug your other drive into the bottom right one.

You shouldn't get a message like that...unless the board is malfuntioning O_o

Huh..what do you mean? I am using the port p0 and p1 for the two SSDs that I want to RAID and double checked that it is the correct the port. Other than this issue, the board runs fine and is very stable though.

I did further troubleshooting by removing my LSI SAS controller and now the error message is gone and I am able to build the array. But now windows refuses to boot up and gives me a BSOD during the bootup process. I guess once you change the SATA type from AHCI to RAID, you'll have to reformat?

[gOtVoltage]

You should be able to reinstall raid driver at start up. its sounds like its looking for the driver for the new array.

[Fatbird]

What's the Intel SSD's model and F/W version?

[wasserkool]

I just figured out...I have an LSI SAS Adapter plugged into one of the PCIE slots that requires a ROM to load in order to initialize the array. I think the adapter is taking up the available memory to load the ROM and leaves no additional memory for the AMD SATA RAID ROM to initialize. I found out by unplugging the SAS Adapter as the error message is also gone...

Interesting find nevertheless.