Rampage IV Black Edition ASMedia RAID controller

[striderstone]

Hello everyone,
I have spent the last 24 hours racking my brain around this issue and I couldn't find anything specifically related to it on the black edition mobo. I have found similar issues related to the RIVE but I believe it's a different raid controller as well as a slightly different problem.

I have 4 SSD's (256gb Vertex 4's) that are plugged into the 4 ports closest to the bottom of the mobo (Which I believe to be the 4 that are 6gb ports on the ASMedia RAID controller.)

The SSD's all show up in the BIOS as hard drives

When I enable RAID mode in the SATA options, I believe this is strictly for the built in intel RAID controller, I can get into the RAID setup options only if I have a hard drive plugged into one of the 1st set of ports.

I set everything to "Enable" under the addon cards and features button for ASMedia just in case

I can NEVER see a hotkey to enter in the raid controller setup

I booted off of a CD to install windows 7 and it said that the drives were not bootable.

I am using BIOS Version 0403

I want to say that I read somewhere that the ASMedia raid controller is for storage only and you can't boot off of it. I am not happy about this but i'll deal with it. Either way I have the following questions...

1. Is there a hardware RAID setup at all or does this all have to be done inside windows?
2. Can I boot from this RAID once I get it working?
3. Should I update to BIOS 0507?

Thank you for the help in advance, I tried to give as much detail as I could, but if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

[Praz]

The ASMedia ports support AHCI mode only. This info can be found in the manual. Software RAID should be doable from within the operating system but the array will not be bootable.

[striderstone]

Praz wrote:
The ASMedia ports support AHCI mode only. This info can be found in the manual. Software RAID should be doable from within the operating system but the array will not be bootable.

/wrists
looks like I can just have a bootable drive and do the RAID0 within software.

I hate that this is such an expensive board with 0 raid controller. I really liked my asrock extreme 11 because of the server grade raid controller...but I hated the fact that there was no water block for it 😞 sold it to get this one and I can't even run my array.

assuming there would be a raid controller was a bad idea. next time I need to do more research.

Thanks for all the help!

[Bark]

Praz wrote:
The ASMedia ports support AHCI mode only. This info can be found in the manual. Software RAID should be doable from within the operating system but the array will not be bootable.

I learned this very thing yesterday and found it in the manual. Doh! As soon as my HDDs were connected to the Intel ports the IRST posted properly and the RAID 1 setup was complete. These Intel ports are 3gbs, does this really matter for storage drives? In my case, I'm using a single SSD for boot drive on one of the 6gbs Intel ports.

Would this software raid you mention be included in Win 8.1? Or, is that an external software?

Thanks!

[Praz]

Bark wrote:
These Intel ports are 3gbs, does this really matter for storage drives?

If by storage drive you mean conventional hard drives you would see no performance increase with SATA 6Gb/s compared to 3Gb/s.

[Praz]

You're welcome. 🙂

The 11 does have more connectivity options but SSD array performance pretty much sucks unless the LSI controller is used as a HBA. Doing so requires software RAID from within the operating system so really no different then what is currently needed to be done with the R4BE using the ASMedia controller. Admittedly configured like this the LSI does offer better performance.

[striderstone]

Anyone know of a good software RAID?

[jpwarlok]

I have studied this exact issue and discovered the best scenario as follows:
SATA6G_1 & SATA6G_2 ( the two SATA ports right in the center of the SATA array) should be used for your RAID 0
SATA3G_1 & SATA3G_2 & SATA3G_3 & SATA3G_4 (the top 4 SATA Ports) should be used for your large HDD storage in RAID 5/10 config.
I have a 4TB and a 1TB drive in the lower two SATA ports for additional storage and moving files around.
good luck with your configurations.

[Perpetualtheist]

jpwarlok wrote:
I have studied this exact issue and discovered the best scenario as follows:
SATA6G_1 & SATA6G_2 ( the two SATA ports right in the center of the SATA array) should be used for your RAID 0
SATA3G_1 & SATA3G_2 & SATA3G_3 & SATA3G_4 (the top 4 SATA Ports) should be used for your large HDD storage in RAID 5/10 config.
I have a 4TB and a 1TB drive in the lower two SATA ports for additional storage and moving files around.
good luck with your configurations.

Sounds like that is the answer^^^ I was kind of debating what was the best way to do my system also. That info seems helpful. I was hoping to do 1 500gb ssd as an OS drive, another 500gb ssd as a program drive, and 3x3tb wd reds as raid 5 for storage etc, and an optical blue ray drive.

Looks like I can do it on this board....(whew, was kind of wondering when i was reading the manual!!)

Thanks again!:cool:

[jmoorez2001]

SATA3G_1 & SATA3G_2 & SATA3G_3 & SATA3G_4 (the top 4 SATA Ports) im useing quad crucial ssd's 256 GB in raid 0 on the rivebe motherboard and works awsome with my OS and then useing the other sata ports for storage ( yes i have a lot of hdd's lol for storage )mostly 2 and 3 tb drives for the rest of the setup and its working flawlessly