Strix Z490-E Gaming RAID setup with M2 drives

[Bogey62]

Hi,

I have a few questions regarding setting up a RAID0 array with M.2 drives on my Strix Z490-E Gaming mobo. I have experience setting up RAID arrays on other older Asus motherbaords, but never with M2 drives:

1) According to the manual, I can use M.2 drives (Key M, Type 2242/2260/2280/22110 - PCIe 3.0 x4). It's only PCIe 3.0. So, is PCIe 4.0 backwards compatible with 3.0? I know I will lose speed, but is it compatible?

2) There is no mention of NVMe in the manual, so would either of these drives work (both are PCIe 4.0 and NvME): Samsung 980 Pro 500 GB (MZ-V8P500B) or Kingston KC3000 (SKC3000S/512G)?

3) According to the motherboard manual, if I have M2 drives in either or both sockets then I will lose use of some of the six SATA connectors on the motherboard. The connectors mentioned are SATA6G_2 and SATA_6G_56. What the heck is SATA6G_56? Does that mean SATA6G_5 AND SATA6G_6?

4) If I have both M2 sockets populated would I lose use of 2 or 3 of the SATA connectors?

5) If the M2 drives are in RAID0 mode can I still use SINGLE hard drives for data, backup, etc. on the SATA connectors? I only ask this because on my old Rampage IV Extreme mobo ALL connected drives had to be in RAID mode. I don't want that setup on my current mobo. I'd like to have a RAID0 array to boot from along with 3 or 4 other separate hard drives connected as single drives to the SATA connectors (Data, Backup_1, Backup_2, etc.)

6) Is there anything special to be aware of when setting this up?

7) Could someone please post a direct link to the RAID Configuration Guide that supposedly resides on the Asus web site? All I can find are FAQs, but no downloadable guide.


Thank you!