Getting RAID to work on the ASUS Maximus SE

[Jodiuh]

They are ADFD, 16MB cache. Also, I've sliced off 70GB for 2 "drives" in the ROM and enabled write back cache in the IMSM.

[DEVIL_DK]

They are ADFD, 16MB cache. Also, I've sliced off 70GB for 2 "drives" in the ROM and enabled write back cache in the IMSM.

WHAT

i think i get that you in the setup bios of raid set it to use max 70 gb insted og 140 gb right.

IMSM what is that

sorry if this is stupid ? i am not that good at raid set up i under stand bacis use of it

[Jodiuh]

Yup, 70GB for the first striped array w/ 128kb stripe size. This thread goes into detail about how to get the most out of an Intel RAID chipset.

IMSM = Intel Matrix Storage Manager

[DEVIL_DK]

IMSM = Intel Matrix Storage Manager

DOOOH me

this relly good info thanks

[Zeussa]

Since you guys helped me with the courage to mess with “The Formula”, I’m going to give a little back here...

Slipstreaming a Windows XP install disc to include RAID drivers for Maximus Formula: Dual boot Vista/XP


For people like me who have a new rig without.... a floppy drive. Why did I not?

THIS IS WHAT WORKED, after a few failed attempts with wrong info...

First we need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager SATA RAID Controller drivers. Open your Formula Maximus Motherboard DVD > Drivers > Chipset > DOS. Copy this DOS file. There are 32 and 64bit folders relative to the XP OS you will install. One of the files in them is iastor.sys but we need them all.

So you threw the disc... go here and grab the one from the top, change extension to .rar and extract with winrar, the Winall folder has the DOS drivers.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filt...bmit=Go%21#DRV

Copy all the files from your XP disc, to a folder named Newxpdisc.

Add your RAID/SATA Drivers
Open the folder to which you copied your Windows XP CD (Newxpdisc) and create a subfolder called $OEM$ (same level as i386). Then, create a subfolder of $OEM$ called $1 and a subfolder of $1 called drivers, then a subfolder called RAID The resulting path should be Newxpdisc\$OEM$\$1\drivers\raid
Now, copy all the single driver files inside the 64bit or 32bit folder you found above, directly inside the raid folder we just made.

Locate the .SYS file for your RAID/SATA controller from among the files you just copied it should be named after your specific controller, in this case iastor.sys and copy this file to the i386 folder of your Windows CD (Newxpdisc\i386).

Open your RAID iastor.inf file in Notepad and copy the PCI identifier strings, which is a series of characters beginning with PCI\VEN in this case there are 5, up to and not including the period. Eg PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C3&CC_0104

Next, open TXTSETUP.SIF (situated in Newxpdisc\i386) and paste your PCI identifier strings under the [HardwareIdsDatabase] section of that file (Edit tab > Find). At the end of the string, add an equal-sign followed by the driver name IN QUOTES “”. In this case it should read like this..

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C3&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2682&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_27C6&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2822&CC_0104 = "iastor"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_282A&CC_0104 = "iastor"

Now scroll down to the [SourceDisksFiles] section of TXTSETUP.SIF and add the following text:
iastor.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1
eg.

[SourceDisksFiles]
iastor.sys = 1,,,,,,_x,4,1


also add iastor.sys= 1 under :

[SourceDisksFiles.x86]

[SourceDisksFiles]
iastor.sys= 1

This last entry may not be necessary, but mine worked for XP 32bit.

Then, under the [SCSI.Load] section, enter:
iastor = iastor.sys,4

Finally, in the [SCSI] section of the file, add the following:
driver_filename = "RAID/SATA Device Name” in this case:

[SCSI]
iastor = "Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller"
iastor = "Intel(R) 631xESB/632xESB SATA RAID Controller"
iastor = "Intel(R) 82801GHM SATA RAID Controller"
iastor = "Intel(R) ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Controller"
iastor = "Intel(R) 82801HEM SATA RAID Controller"

Oops, almost there. In this step, open Notepad and make a file called WINNT.SIF in the i386 folder of our Windows setup files (Newxpdisc\i386). This file can be used to create an unattended installation routine. But for here we need to customize the OemPnPDriversPath line by entering the path to the .INF file for your RAID/SATA driver . That is the path after the $1 folder... eg "drivers\raid" include the quotes! so in this case we copy this to our WINNT.SIF file...

[Data]
AutoPartition=0
MsDosInitiated="0"
UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
UnattendMode=ProvideDefault
OemPreinstall=Yes
OemSkipEula=Yes
NoWaitAfterTextMode=1
NoWaitAfterGUIMode=1

WaitForReboot="No"
TargetPath=E:WINDOWS
DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore
OemPnPDriversPath="drivers\raid"

[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipWelcome = 1

[UserData]
ProductKey=
FullName=""
OrgName=""

Prepare your bootable CD and burn it. For this I used Power ISO.
Straightforward and it has a simple Help.

Extract the small boot image from our original Windows XP disc so we can use it to make our slipstreamed CD bootable as well. With power ISO it’s called a .bif file. Action" --> "Boot" --> "Save Boot information
Next make the boot CD. Action" --> "Boot" --> "Add Boot information.. find the .bif boot image you just saved. Now drag in all files from inside the Newxpdisc folder to the main window in Power ISO... jam the Burn button and you got it!

IMPORTANT. When installing XP on this type of system. Unfortunately, XP doesn't always recognize a computer BIOS is ACPI capable and doesn't install the support for ACPI.
Once you drop the CD in the tray and fire up the computer to install XP, the first thing you'll see at the bottom of the screen is the option to press F6 if you need to install a SCSI or RAID controller. Don't press F6. Press F5 instead. This will take you to a separate menu of Hardware Abstraction Layer's where you can choose an appropriate HAL that supports ACPI. Scroll Upwards to choose ACPI Multiprocessor PC from the list below.

ACPI Multiprocessor PC
ACPI Uniprocessor PC
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC
Compaq SystemPro Multiprocessor or 100% Compatible PC
MPS Uniprocessor PC
MPS Multiprocessor PC
Standard PC
Standard PC with C-Step i486
Other

Dual Boot issue: If you already have Vista installed, you wont have a Dual Boot choice as XP boots as a default, go here to solve this issue...
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

[Exahertz]

This thread needs pics!!



That's a pair of Raptor 74GB 8MB's w/ 70GB slices. Last week, I had a mini LAN and the array loaded COD4 MP maps 2x faster than my buddies single.

I also ran into the issue of Vista x86 not liking my drives on install, but creating a new part and rebooting took care of that. It installed just fine wo/ drivers and I threw on the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver/software after the chipset. I've cut the power from Vista a couple times and have lost no data...not even a rebuild on the mirror, hehe.

For onboard RAID, it's def a step up over the 590/570 on Nv's boards.

Whow how are you gettin a burst speed of 2570.8 Mb/s while DK DEVIL and I are only in the 250s?????? Is that number real??

[magica]

OK I started reading this http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=467848

Before I get confused about needing to use the matrix or something and go off into left field Ill ask a question.

I have 2 wd Raid edition 250gb drives I have been running in raid 0 on my old setup. I want to build a raid o again on the new maximus formula.

Can I go just by the book and this thred we are in now or would it be benificial to me to use some new matrix set up. I really just want to get a painless and stable raid 0 setup as soon asa my new parts show up. Im only going to use these 2 drives too.

thanks

[Jodiuh]

Enabling write back cache shows burst rates that bench fast. But it also has benefits as far as making the drive feel snappier overall and giving better transfer rates.

And cutting out 50GB of those 2 250GB's will give you some very nice random access...snappiness. Then use the remaining in another 0 or a 1.

[sup3rfly]

been trying to setup raid 0 for my raptor x, but i m getting an weird issue, i have already set the RAID mode in the bios, but i cant seems to get into the IMSM by pressing ctrl + i, what have i done wrong??? is there something that i need to set in bios in order to get the IMSM to be functioned??? 1 more thing, if i set RAID mode, i wont be able to see any hdd anymore in the bios after i save settings and exit from the bios.... someone plz help

currently i m using 0907 bios, tried 0903 no go as well >.<

[Ashmedai]

To contribute my experiences:

No problem getting it to work under Vista. I didn't run any benchmark tests, but it seemed snappy. Installed SP1 RC1 with same results.

Under XP, had to slipstream the ICH9R drivers, no other problem. Install time around 10 minutes with a Raptor RAID, so I don't think there are any major problems here either. (The Vista sound stuttering issue was worse than ever on this board, and I didn't feel like fighting with it all over again with class starting back up tomorrow! SP1 doesn't fix this...)

With a Highpoint RocketRAID 1820A card installed, the RAID on the ICH9R is not an available option in the BIOS boot menu. There may be a way to change this, no idea. With two other hard drives attached to the ICH9R while it is in RAID mode, they do not show up as boot options either (with or without Highpoint card). The optical drive attached to the ICH9R appears as an option in both cases.

This board is very finicky about what's attached to it, for example with my USB hub attached the pre-OS boot process takes about 5 minutes. Also my generic SI SATA card doesn't function properly on this board, boot stalls on it while detecting drives - but if you power up the drives after boot, it works fine, and it works fine on another mobo. The version of the Asus software package that comes on the CD also caused major issues in Vista. Good hardware, substandard software? :/

[Zeussa]

This board is very finicky about what's attached to it, for example with my USB hub attached the pre-OS boot process takes about 5 minutes. Also my generic SI SATA card doesn't function properly on this board, boot stalls on it while detecting drives - but if you power up the drives after boot, it works fine, and it works fine on another mobo. The version of the Asus software package that comes on the CD also caused major issues in Vista. Good hardware, substandard software? :/

I am now all set up with RAID and E-SATA, and just dig this mobo. Had my probs working thro it tho. Slipstreamed the RAID drivers in the XP instal, all good, i mentioned how here earlier.

But crap, tried earlier using my Promise SATA300 TX4302 PCI Card to connect external E-SATA.. all went pearshaped... as it turns out, there is a conflict with the mobo sata controler... Intel finally emailed me and said...'Keep in mind that, it is a Marvell* Controller that handles the e-SATA ports on X38 and X48 boards, not the Intel(R) ICH9R.'

Well now i got it, there was a conflict with which sata controler had the first say, so looks like the PCI sata cards are not a choice here, yet. Anyways, i decided that 4 internal HD's is enough, i want air flow thro the 2 front HD case fans, spesh to the area of the Northbridge and GPU cards. So all good, with 2 E-SATA adaptor/connectors direct from the 2 remaining mobo sata ports, we got less crowding in the PCI area and HD bays. hope that helps ya all.

Now one more thing to iron out, Crysis still flickers with Catalyst 8.1 in Crossfire with Vista... looks like DX10 don't like Xfire yet... craps!

[magica]

I set up me raid 0 and then installed that matrix software, doesnt really do anything for me at least i couldnt find anything to do with it. Running nice at about 310 mbs. No problem with this new forumula MB so far either!!!

[Wolf2000me]

My Maximus Formula came in a few days ago, but I'm still waiting on my case and watercooling stuff.
At this point it's all lying on a piece of protective foam fully operational and mildly overclocked to 2.8ghz 9x311Mhz for first OC probing
At load with 3 primes on it's at 72&#176;C so I got a bit suspicious. I left vcore control to the bios at first. Seems the voltage was set at 1.3v automatically. Manual voltage settings seems to result in lower actual voltages. I'll read up on all of this in all the threads I found around here. Now the monitoring software reports a vcore of 1.14 - 1.15v, while it is set at 1.23v in the bios. I'm running 4 instances of SPPrime at that voltage and everything has been stable for 2 hours.
This just as a side note, a little OT but hey

I set the OS up on a RAID-0 array with default 128kb stripe size. Everything went smoothely until I got the OS up and running and played around with it. Suddenly I experience some slowness and a few seconds later a BSOD with memory paging error. Likely storage as my software that came with the CD told me afterwards of a write error on disk 2. The RAID BIOS also keeps telling me that disk 2 is in an error state. This all started when everything was still at stock speeds.
I've been benching everything after the reboot and overclock, nothing else has happened except for the RAID tool telling me that there is some fishyness attached to my RAID array. It comes back after every reboot, probably reading out the info on the rom chip.
The RAID bios also reports the error but it might just be a flag that got raised. There doesn't seem any way to reset it.

Here are my specs:

Asus Maximus Formula
Geforce 8800 GT 512Mb at stock
Intel Q6600 SLACR at 311x9
2 GB OCZ memory running below stock, it can't handle much of a punch ..
OCZ Modstream 550 W
Stock Intel heatsink and everything running caseless so far
2x WD 160 gb disks.

[magica]

Well you spent all that money on this stuff so far, I suggest if you wana raid o you do it right with a matched couple of WD RAID EDITION hard drives. Mine have been sweet. In about the year & 1/2 owning these raid edition drives my data has been solid.I wont fly with anything less again.

I see your running some wd drives maybe the ks series. I was running 2 250 gb drives in raid o for a while the ks wd drives.
One failed in about 2 months. These drives simply cant take raid o requirements anymore I guess. Thats why ill never use them again in a raid o.

[Wolf2000me]

Well you spent all that money on this stuff so far, I suggest if you wana raid o you do it right with a matched couple of WD RAID EDITION hard drives. Mine have been sweet. In about the year & 1/2 owning these raid edition drives my data has been solid.I wont fly with anything less again.

I see your running some wd drives maybe the ks series. I was running 2 250 gb drives in raid o for a while the ks wd drives.
One failed in about 2 months. These drives simply cant take raid o requirements anymore I guess. Thats why ill never use them again in a raid o.

These are two identical drives which have been running a RAID 0 setup in my old rig.

[magica]

I would be very worried. Please let us know if you can get these errors to go away with your old drives. Good luck.

[Zeussa]

These are two identical drives which have been running a RAID 0 setup in my old rig.

Hey Wolfy, make sure you got the latest Driver updates from ASUS for this board.. like Intel ICH9 RAID Driver, Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility and of course intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager Driver.

Also, do the drives have to be both formatted for a fresh RAID setup in a new system..?

Noticed you got the 8800GT, ha, so did i, underwent 2 weeks of hell after i booted my first game up.. frozen hell. Turns out there is a power problem with comunications between the 8800GT and PSU firmwares, all over the net. I took it back and ditched it for twin ATI 3870, was cheaper anyways so what the hell, big bonus with the new ATI driver this week, can run with dual montors in Crossfire now, previously one shut off.

Anyway, try the ASUS driver updates.

And if anyone else is interested in the ATI Crysis Hotfix Vista...
http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/848/mirrors.php

[Wolf2000me]

So far I haven't had a problem anymore. But the raid bios keeps reporting the one disk as being in the error state.
Does anyone know how to reset the diagnostic states of the drives in the bios?
I think a memory problem might have caused the file system error. Otherwise, what's the chance of getting a raid controller tripping up once in the first few moments of operation and then never to see a problem again. My initial bios settings, rather defaultish, seemed a bit off and this cheap OCZ memory I got doesn't oc for one bit.

But I'll keep you guys posted. I am going to attach a whole lot more drives to the SATA/RAID controller in the near future. If there are intermittent problems they'll surface for sure.

[Wolf2000me]

Hmm I seem to have missed your post Zeussy
What exactly do you mean with asus driver updates? I can only update my bios through some kind of update program.
My 8800GT is running great. I just can't seem to find its temp readings in this monitoring software from asus and rivatuner.

Also... What also bothers me... The RAID controller has audio feedback whenever there's activity. Much like the notorious 'whining sound' brought about by video cards or coils.

[Zeussa]

What exactly do you mean with asus driver updates? I can only update my bios through some kind of update program.
.

Thats right, but it's not a bios update, these drivers are applied once in the OS. Get em here and put am all in as they're meant....

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...Language=en-us

Interestingly, there is also an AI Suite new update there too, sorts the prob of it not opening when i updated to BIOS 907, and temp reads. Also a new PC ProbeII.

But i did read somewhere that one needs NEW, untouched Hardrives when configing RAID for the first time, so maybe this applies when taking already RAID configed HD to a new system, if they don't sync up in RAID 0 for some reason, there will always be a failure on any one disc, it just wont match up. Also, the system prolly wants to put it's own RAID disc management info on the discs, via Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager Driver. Check out the Wikipedia about RAID info. Hope that helps.

[Wolf2000me]

Thats right, but it's not a bios update, these drivers are applied once in the OS. Get em here and put am all in as they're meant....

http://support.asus.com/download/dow...Language=en-us

Interestingly, there is also an AI Suite new update there too, sorts the prob of it not opening when i updated to BIOS 907, and temp reads. Also a new PC ProbeII.

But i did read somewhere that one needs NEW, untouched Hardrives when configing RAID for the first time, so maybe this applies when taking already RAID configed HD to a new system, if they don't sync up in RAID 0 for some reason, there will always be a failure on any one disc, it just wont match up. Also, the system prolly wants to put it's own RAID disc management info on the discs, via Intel(R) Matrix Storage Manager Driver. Check out the Wikipedia about RAID info. Hope that helps.

I never attempted to use the same RAID-0 config from my old board to my new one. That certainly wouldn't work and would cause all kinds of problems. No, both disks were formatted before I attached them. I then created a new RAID-0 config in the raid bios and installed the OS on it, using the F6 + driver disk combo. That whole process ran flawlessly. I also reformatted the RAID volume in the OS install interface.

But I do have a new related problem which I've been able to recreate three times. I'll specify it as best as I can and I'll also get back to you with additional info once I'm back home. I'm at work now so I don't have access to the test environment.

Here's what happens:
During a stress test with SPPrime on 4 cores using 256mb memory I got system stalls. This happened at 3400 Mhz and after the prime test had been going on flawlessly for 2 hours.
The event viewer told me this:
"The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period."
I restarted the system and tried again, recreating the problem, which succeeded and a new event was written to the log.
After that I updated my drivers to the newest version and tried again. I didn't get that exact error log after a while but I got a warningl: disk log event. But the symptoms are the same and also a BSOD came about. I'll post its error codes once I'm back home, but that'll be at least 5 hours after this post.

Both disks were on SATA channel 5 and 6 (counting from the first channel as 1).
I have now changed them to channel 1 and two where I previously had my SATA DVDRW drive attached. I put that one in slot 5 and it's currently being tested as we speak, figuratively
I hope there's not a BSOD waiting for me when I get back home though I suspect there will.
Something tells me that this is either a power interface issue or ACPI problem. Both are of course related.

Does anyone else hear a sound when the RAID controller is doing I/O commands?

[Jodiuh]

Whenever, I've used onboard RAID, OC has been more difficult. Upping the SB volts usually helps w/ this. Not sure what to tell ya if it's not OC related.

[Wolf2000me]

This one might be oc related and I did increase the SB voltage. I hadn't experienced this kind of behaviour until I was beyond 3400Mhz. However at stock I've had the above mentioned problem. I still suspect IRQ or ACPI conflicts.

When I got back home the system was restarted shortly after I left for work, as indicated by the logfile of spprime. It obviously wasn't a BSOD as I checked automatic reboot off.
After the reboot there didn't seem a problem and my event logs has entries up until just after the reboot. No warnings and no errors.
I now upped the voltage a bit and I'll test it the same way as before. I just hope I won't get instability due to temps as I'm still at stock intel cooling.
I've been waiting on my wc stuff since before christmas. This was the last time I ordered from that webshop

[Wolf2000me]

I switched both drives to SATA 1 and 2, the DVDRW drive to SATA 5. No changes in the BIOS or drivers and all seems to be working great.
IRQ list is somewhat shuffled and the raid controller is now sharing one with the audio device while it used to be with the usb controller. Apic is enabled though. Don't know if it's a coincidence.

[Zeussa]

Brilliant, another dillema solved, and you did it all by yourself... SATA 1 & 2 may have been the secret for raid, but yeah, you may want to back down your OC if there's more probs. And if your still waiting on a Case, i would recomend the Antec 900, but that's full of air, you want to go water.

Don't forget, you can run External E-SATA straight off the SATA on board, if you want to keep some airflow thro from the front fans, 4 HD is enough there, i got the E-Sata connected to 5 & 6 Ports, working very stable.

Guess i'm being carefull at only 3GHz CPU, temps at load 55 C -NB and 45 C -CPU, so there's room for temps, i will push it up this later as i get organised and things prove to be alright.

Also Wolfy, Wouldn't mind to know your final OC changes when you get things set up with suitable RAM and yo water slushing thro.... cool.