Asrock x79 extreme 9 pressing ctrl+i won't work and i can't use intel raid utility!!

[Diasgod]

Good morning guys,

I solved the problem with the frequency of my memory at 2133MHZ upgrading my bios to L.281 version and now i have to deal another problem. If someone have the same motherboard as me Asrock x79 extreme 9 maybe he shall help me.

I have 2 SSD Corsair hard disks 60GB of capacity Force series that they are similar to eachother. First disk has the operating system Windows 8 pro x64 and with a few programms also installed at him the remaining free space is 3GB only. That's why i bought yesterday a similar disk to him to make them work together in a RAID 0 order. First i will succed more space in one capacity of them and secondly i will bring off a scale of speed inmy system. I unplugged all my rest hard disks and when i turn on my system i tried to press CTRL+I to activate Intel Raid Utility. I have also change and set the SATA mode from ACHI to Raid inside Bios setup. CTRL+I won't work.

I would like to tell me step by step what imust do to work them together in a raid 0 weither in bios or in Windowsenviroment if possible because i tried also in self.


Best regards

Skouras Stylianos.

[parsec]

Do you have the Intel RSTe RAID driver installed on your OS drive?

Do you have the BIOS option "Display Option ROM" enabled in the BIOS?

Are you sure your SSDs are connected to the Intel SATA ports? There are non-Intel SATA ports on your board.

If you installed Windows 8 in AHCI mode, you cannot just change to RAID mode, once your PC boots it will Blue screen crash, or BSOD. You will either need to reinstall Windows 8 in RAID mode and install the RSTe RAID driver during the installation, or perform a Windows Registry fix to allow changing to RAID mode, with the RSTe RAID driver already installed. What SATA driver are you using now?

If your PC was configured correctly for Intel RAID mode, the RAID utility screen would display automatically, all CTRL I does it make it stop booting and allow you to work with the RAID utility.

You need to answer the questions I asked, and read your boards manual about how to configure RAID to learn more about it.

[synack]

I don't know about your board, but mine requires that I change the sata port mode from AHCI to "raid" for the ctrl+I option to show up.

I want to caution you that combining your drives into a raid 0 set will wipe whatever data is on those drives. If you want to save anything on those drives, you better do a full backup.

[parsec]

Actually Syn, I think I was able to add a second and third SSD to a single OS drive SSD, with the IRST Windows UI, or at least I could swear I did. Hmm, maybe that was just adding the third SSD to an existing RAID 0 volume of two SSDs, it's been a while since I did that. Actually, I should not be recommending this method to a first time RAID user.

I agree with your first statement, you must be in RAID mode for the IRST Option ROM to display during POST, and then you can use CTRL I to stop POST and use the utility. That is really a given. But, changing from AHCI to RAID with an OS installed in AHCI mode will not allow the OS to boot, without the registry fix I generally mentioned, or a fresh Windows installation in RAID mode.

[synack]

Actually Syn, I think I was able to add a second and third SSD to a single OS drive SSD, with the IRST Windows UI, or at least I could swear I did. Hmm, maybe that was just adding the third SSD to an existing RAID 0 volume of two SSDs, it's been a while since I did that. Actually, I should not be recommending this method to a first time RAID user.

I agree with your first statement, you must be in RAID mode for the IRST Option ROM to display during POST, and then you can use CTRL I to stop POST and use the utility. That is really a given. But, changing from AHCI to RAID with an OS installed in AHCI mode will not allow the OS to boot, without the registry fix I generally mentioned, or a fresh Windows installation in RAID mode.

Yea, I know. it'll probably work fine without losing data if the master is properly set first, and the controller rebuilds without reseting by reading the blocks off the master and striping them to the second or third drive... but I didn't want to get too technical and that's taking a risk. Everyone *should* fully backup prior to doing this operation anyway... because data loss can happen VERY quickly.

I'm not sure however what the proper procedure would be to initialize the first disk as a master without loosing data...
I would "try" setting it as a 1 drive raid 0, then ADD the second drive...
but I don't know how destructive that Intel controller is on setting the raid 0 in the first place.

Syn