Maximus Z90 Hero BIOS 1801: Security Lock Enabled on SATA drive and inserted USB Flash Drives

[Melina]

Hello,

I have built a PC around the ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, with ROG 4080 OC Edition graphics card, Intel 14900KF CPU, 32GB Corsair Vengeance 6000MT RAM, bunch of drives. NVMe to SATA. All working properly, 1801 BIOS, latest drivers installed. Currently not AI Overclocked, IRST set to Off in BIOS, OC set to Auto to get 6000 out of the default 4800 RAM.

My brain twisting issue is this: I cannot get one WDC 2002EX SATA HD to format. I can create a partition with Disk Manager, create a primary Volume, but get an error about Disk Manager being out of sync when I go to format.

Further: if I put a formatted USB flash drive into a port, it is not even seen and cannot be accessed. If I put it (exFAT) in another older Win10 PC, or a Mac laptop, it reads and writes normally.

what’s going on? All system diagnostics and driver checks register as normal.

in Device Manager, “RAID Controller” and two Unknown Devices show up. What have I not installed?

I don’t want the BIOS or IRST to try to be on, if I turn it on it tries to convert my disks to RAID and kills Windows 11, making it un bootable and requiring a full reinstall.

where do I go from here????

EDIT: Okay with HWINFO64, I have discovered this mystery: Both the SATA drive in question and the USB Flash Drive inserted are showing "Security Locked." This is a function of BIOS, apparently, as far as I can see.

How do I turn off Security Locked for both the SATA HD and any inserted Flash Drives???

[Melina]

Changed to UEFI Mode in BIOS without having to start from scratch, so Secure Boot is enabled, drives no longer "locked." Still can't format the HD.

I'm just going to assume Windows 11 is crazy, safe assumption. Don't need the SATA HD, it can sit there unpartitioned and unformatted, and don't need to use USB Flash Drives. Security, I guess, Windows-style! <G>  Runs cool enough an old HD sitting in there like a rotted tooth makes no difference.

Otherwise the system is working brilliantly..

[JohnAb]

Sounds like you haven't installed the Intel Rapid storage Technology drivers which explains the RAID error in Device Manager. You might be missing some others too, maybe Chipset and Serial IO drivers? Have a careful look on you support page and make sure you expand every section, as some drivers aren't visible by default. 

Even better, work through MoKiChU's drivers threads here and make sure you aren't missing anything...

https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/hardware-build-advice/index-all-my-drivers-firmware-software-threads/m...

I have never seen the 'security locked' message for any drives, that's a new one, but hopefully drivers might help. Otherwise, I can only think that those drives might have been encrypted at some point? That shouldn't stop you from formatting them though. 

[Melina]

Thanks, John. But here's the question: all the info online suggests I _shouldn't_ install those drivers UNLESS I want to create a RAID array -- which I don't. Totally confusing to me, maybe I'm suffering from dementia??? My concern is at some point I had those installed and BIOS seemed to want to auto-convert my storage to a RAID solution, which messed up W11 enough that I had to go through a complete reinstall (and download of gigabytes and gigabytes of apps subsequently). So I should have the IRST drivers installed even if I _don't_ want a RAID array???

[Melina]

Okay so now have installed IRST without disaster (haven't completely powered off and back on, though, just shut down and then restarted with power on button). Yay! But I'm still getting this, with my WDC2002EX:

"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up to date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer.

An unexpected error hs occurred. Check the System Event Log for more information on the error. Close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer."

I have been obedient, followed all its direction, with no change, whether refreshing the console or restarting the computer. Still gets to this point no matter what I do.

This is whether I use Disk Manager from the r-click Start menu, or diskpart from cmd (latest Windows Powershell).

Re: the security lock thing, that had to do with my somehow getting myself into a state where I had Windows 11 installed semi-successfully but somehow in Other OS and non-Secure Boot mode (magic?). Held my breath, fixed to UEFI, solved that problem. With Secure BOot on, W11 deigns to unlock the drive again.

I have gone thru the diskpart clean, attributes etc. rigamarole but it doesn't make any difference; this is where I always end up! rescan, etc. You'd think the HD is bad, but HWINFO64 and AIDA64 Extreme are both quite happy with it, down to the sector level.

Is it just a disk too far??? I have used a lot of the storage on the Z790, in part to make sure it all works ( have one, unfilled slot on the Hyper M.2 NVMe card, which is sadly only PCI-e 4.0. The 4080 Nvidia graphics hog eats the space where the PCIe 5.0 slot is under it, so it just gets to sit there and pretend it can plan for the future... unless Nividia makes a 5080 card that's slimmer than a razor blade with 4TB of DDR8 RAM and gigaquantumcomputingcyclesinfiniteforever rendering capabilities, all for $299...).

Some days it starts to feel like car sales. Careful engineering to guarantee upsell. 😉 Just kidding, I love this stuff oh well.

JK