A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

[ChrisPbass]

I'm changing my setup to RAID.
Win is already installed AHCI. I have the boot SSD and 2 identical HD. All were running AHCI.
Went into the BIOS and changed to RAID.
Rebooted. The option ROM utility came up.

I chose one of the to-be-RAID drives and hit secure erase. This is a 3tb drive btw.
I'm pretty sure it was 65% when I went to bed and I assumed it would be done by now. It is now at 53%.
It says erase count 1 of 1 and it does say Start Time of 9:30pm which is accurate...The % has moved to 54%...is this normal? Seems like it should have been done by now.

Yeah...it's kicking along. 59%

Well crap. It got to 1% and I tried to stop it but could not.

[- wardog -]

re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

Can one assume this Pro4-M in the Title is yet referring to the A75 Pro4-M you've posted of previously? Would you like the Title changed/altered?

[ChrisPbass]

re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

Yes it is the same board. A75 Pro4-M.
It just did another round of erasing but its still on Count 1 of 1.
Going on 24 hours....
The option to stop the process is the ESC key. Hitting that key makes a clicking sound (the HD?) but does not nothing else.

Win 7 Pro 64 w/SSD as boot, 2 'identical' 3tb drives and 1 tb drive.
Asrock Pro4-M board.
Win was originally set up as AHCI.

1st time doing this, ever.
I'm changing my setup to RAID. I want to mirror the 3tb drives.
Went into the BIOS and changed to SATA AHCI to RAID.
Rebooted. Ctrl F - The option ROM utility came up.
I then set it to Secure Erase 1 of the to-be RAID drives.
The AMD Option ROM documentation did not necessarily say to erase the drive but it seemed like the prudent thing to do.

[parsec]

re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

If that secure erase option in the OROM utility is doing a true HDD secure erase, then it is writing (usually) zeros or random characters across the entire 3TB of the HDD. But I doubt it would take almost 24 hours for that operation to complete, even on a 3TB HDD. Something is going wrong during the secure erase process IMO, possibly due to the size of the HDD (more on that later), so you're just wasting time and should end that process. Frankly I would just hold down the power button on the PC case and it should shut off quickly, and should not damage the HDD. I would not bother secure erasing those HDDs when you try again.

You have other important issues ahead of you. Normally when Windows is installed in IDE or AHCI mode, changing to RAID mode will then cause a failure to boot. That is true with Intel's RAID and previous AMD chipsets that support RAID. The same is probably true for your chipset, but it's worth a test to find out. All you need to do is set the SATA mode to RAID and try to boot Windows. Do nothing with the OROM utility, which will make no difference. Let us know either way what happens. If it fails, just restart and go into the BIOS and change back to AHCI mode, and boot.

If Windows failed to boot with the SATA mode set to RAID, you have two options. The first is to install Windows again with the SATA mode set to RAID. That's a pain, I know, welcome to RAID. Option 2, which is not a given, is to perform a registry edit that allows Windows to correctly load the AMD RAID driver during the conversion process of AHCI to RAID. The problem is the registry entry for the AMD A75 chipset RAID driver is not something I know of, or is commonly known. It also depends on what version of Windows you are using, which we don't know.

Do you know if you've installed your board's RAID driver? Since you installed your OS in AHCI mode, I assume using the All-in-One driver, then I doubt it was installed.

Next, what is the purpose of your RAID array? For storage I assume, not for your OS? Any drives over 2.2TB in size must use the GPT partitioning table type, that can be chosen when the drive is formatted, in order for all the capacity above 2.2TB to be recognized.

[- wardog -]

re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

Any drives over 2.2TB in size must use the GPT partitioning table type, that can be chosen when the drive is formatted, in order for all the capacity above 2.2TB to be recognized.

It may prove too early to call but I'm venturing a winner in the above quoted here. My thinking too, 3TB and GPT.

[ChrisPbass]

re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

If that secure erase option in the OROM utility is doing a true HDD secure erase, then it is writing (usually) zeros or random characters across the entire 3TB of the HDD. But I doubt it would take almost 24 hours for that operation to complete, even on a 3TB HDD. Something is going wrong during the secure erase process IMO, possibly due to the size of the HDD (more on that later), so you're just wasting time and should end that process. Frankly I would just hold down the power button on the PC case and it should shut off quickly, and should not damage the HDD. I would not bother secure erasing those HDDs when you try again.

Ok. I killed the process by shutting down the PC.
I could swear I edited the original post w/setup data.
A75 Pro4-M
Win 7 Pro 64 w/SSD as boot, 2 'identical' 3tb drives and 1 tb drive.
Win was installed in AHCI mode.

You have other important issues ahead of you. Normally when Windows is installed in IDE or AHCI mode, changing to RAID mode will then cause a failure to boot. That is true with Intel's RAID and previous AMD chipsets that support RAID. The same is probably true for your chipset, but it's worth a test to find out. All you need to do is set the SATA mode to RAID and try to boot Windows. Do nothing with the OROM utility, which will make no difference. Let us know either way what happens. If it fails, just restart and go into the BIOS and change back to AHCI mode, and boot.

I read about that and have registry edits from https://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 that I planned on doing if Win did not boot correctly.

If Windows failed to boot with the SATA mode set to RAID, you have two options. The first is to install Windows again with the SATA mode set to RAID. That's a pain, I know, welcome to RAID. Option 2, which is not a given, is to perform a registry edit that allows Windows to correctly load the AMD RAID driver during the conversion process of AHCI to RAID. The problem is the registry entry for the AMD A75 chipset RAID driver is not something I know of, or is commonly known. It also depends on what version of Windows you are using, which we don't know.

Do you know if you've installed your board's RAID driver? Since you installed your OS in AHCI mode, I assume using the All-in-One driver, then I doubt it was installed.

I did not install the RAID driver.

Next, what is the purpose of your RAID array? For storage I assume, not for your OS? Any drives over 2.2TB in size must use the GPT partitioning table type, that can be chosen when the drive is formatted, in order for all the capacity above 2.2TB to be recognized.

Storage. I believe the drives are formatted GPT because of their size.

OK. Win will not load. The ROM Option utility comes up and then Win Start Up recovery comes up.

What do you suggest? How do I actually do the registry edit w/o getting into Windows?
Reinstalling Win is not the end of the world but I'd rather not....

EDIT Switched it back to AHCI. Went into Win, did the registry edit. Rebooted, changed to SATA / RAID. Saved and exited BIOS. Went into the ROM option utility and set 2 of the drives to RAID 1. Exiting the utility takes me to the Win recovery screen.
Do you think I should just reinstall in RAID mode?

[parsec]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

What registry edit did you do? If you search for that edit, in general it will give you instructions for the Intel RAID driver fix. Did you change an iaStor entry?

Or if you found AMD RAID instructions, what driver entry did it say to edit?

[ChrisPbass]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

I did the Mr.Fixit @

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\IastorV
In the pane on the right side, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

I d/l'd the RAID driver for W764 from ASRock's page for my board @ ASRock > A75 Pro4-M
but I don't see/when were to supply them to my PC. Win will ask for the drivers upon installation of Win right?

I don't know....I'm probably doing something wrong. I set up RAID per http://manuals.ts.fujitsu.com/file/1...-rom-ug-en.pdf
I made the settings to the 2 drives and rebooted. It seems like something besides simply rebooting into the OS should happen but that's what appears to be happening, though it fails.
I assumed that the new configuration would crank the drives and set them up to mirror.
But....I'm a RAID newb so...

I'll go through it again and see if I missed a step. I do see that the possibility of the RAID driver not being there screwing up the boot.

[- wardog -]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

ASRock > A75 Pro4-M RAID Installation Guide

[ChrisPbass]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

ASRock > A75 Pro4-M RAID Installation Guide

I linked that above. The one above is on the fujitsu's site but it's the same link.
I did follow the guide but am either doing something wrong or some other parameter is messed up.
I'm going to go through it again tonight if I have time.

[- wardog -]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

In Dev Mgr, did you try changing to/updating the RAID driver yet???

[ChrisPbass]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

In Dev Mgr, did you try changing to/updating the RAID driver yet???

I assumed that at some point Win would ask me for a RAID driver. I did not think I was supposed to do through this Dev Mgr.

I went into the BIOS and changed to RAID.
Win booted.
Went into Dev Mgr and tried to update the to-be RAID HDs by hitting update driver and browsing to the flash drive I put the drivers.
Win kept telling me the drivers were already updated.

I went to the flash drive and ran the .msi file for W764RAID. It ran but did not prompt me for anything except UAC which I allowed.
I rebooted and it will only boot to the system recovery.

[parsec]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

I assumed that at some point Win would ask me for a RAID driver. I did not think I was supposed to do through this Dev Mgr.

I went into the BIOS and changed to RAID.
Win booted.
Went into Dev Mgr and tried to update the to-be RAID HDs by hitting update driver and browsing to the flash drive I put the drivers.
Win kept telling me the drivers were already updated.

I went to the flash drive and ran the .msi file for W764RAID. It ran but did not prompt me for anything except UAC which I allowed.
I rebooted and it will only boot to the system recovery.

The RAID driver is used by your board's SATA storage controller, not the disk drives themselves. Which is why updating the HDD driver failed.

Hopefully you have the AMD RAID driver installed now, which should appear as an entry in Storage Controller in Device Manager.

The "Fix-It" for the iaStorV works only for Intel RAID drivers. You need to find the registry entry for the AMD RAID driver, whose name I'll need to find.

[ChrisPbass]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

The RAID driver is used by your board's SATA storage controller, not the disk drives themselves. Which is why updating the HDD driver failed.

Hopefully you have the AMD RAID driver installed now, which should appear as an entry in Storage Controller in Device Manager.

The "Fix-It" for the iaStorV works only for Intel RAID drivers. You need to find the registry entry for the AMD RAID driver, whose name I'll need to find.

I have not changed the SATA controller to RAID. Do I change to RAID in the BIOS and then go to dev mgr and update the SATA controller there?

If so...I can't get it to boot so I can't get into dev mgr. It I stay in AHCI it will boot, otherwise it wants to either run win normally or use system repair. 'win normal' is not booting.



Yeah.....this is ain't happening.

http://www.wikihow.com/Enable-RAID-or-AHCI-without-Reinstalling-Windows-%28for-AMD-SB85-or-SB8XX-Controllers%29

People claim this works. It doesn't work for me. I can't get it to boot in RAID.

[ChrisPbass]

Re: A75 Pro4-M Raid setup / Secure erase

I have not changed the SATA controller to RAID. Do I change to RAID in the BIOS and then go to dev mgr and update the SATA controller there?

If so...I can't get it to boot so I can't get into dev mgr. It I stay in AHCI it will boot, otherwise it wants to either run win normally or use system repair. 'win normal' is not booting.



Yeah.....this is ain't happening.
How to Enable RAID or AHCI without Reinstalling Windows (for AMD SB85 or SB8XX Controllers)

People claim this works. It doesn't work for me. I can't get it to boot in RAID.

Seems like I'm just talking to myself here...but anyway. I could not boot to RAID. User error or f'd config or what...I do not know.
I mirrored the drives using device manager.