By, Charles Wirth August 4th 2016
First look at VROC X16!
Intel VROC "Virtual RAID on CPU"
Intel VMD "Volume Management Device"
My M.2 drives are the retail 32GB Optane SSD.
These drives are 2x PCIe 3.0 lanes and boast the highest 4K transfers on the market.
Rules and lockouts:
You may boot RAID 0 only with Intel M.2 drives without KEY installed.
M.2 to U.2 adapters work.
Other drives work in RAID but you cannot boot them even with KEY installed.
Mixing drives is possible, not suggested in mixing them in RAID without KEY installed.
Some PCIe slots are wired for 8x PCIe 3.0 lanes, the VROC card will work in 8x.
PCH RAID and VMD RAID cannot mix drives or RAID, both can be enabled.
You may only use RSTe 5.0 and newer drivers to setup VROC/VMD in Windows.
Up to 18 drives are RAID possible on the Apex mother board. I am told there is a configuration that supports 20 drives (5 VROC cards)
These 32GB Optane drives are unsupported and it will damage the drives writing RAID data to an area at the end of the drive.
Setting up the VROC:
Go into BIOS and enable VMD, by default this is disabled.
Go into CPU storage configuration and tell the BIOS what slot the VROC card is in, then save and exit.
Go back into BIOS and at the bottom of the advanced window you will now see Intel Virtual RAID on CPU menu.
In this menu you can create and delete RAID 0 without a KEY installed.
I have managed to boot on dual Optane drives in RAID 0 on VROC but there are performance issues, as of right now I am waiting on a new RSTe driver 5.1.x
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