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  • RAID issue

    I currently have the ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 AM3+ motherboard, and have installed 2 OCZ Storage Solutions Vector 150 Series 120GB SATA III drives and tried them in RAID 0, as well as RAID 1, and the drives show up as Status Critical. But when I put them back in AHCI and just boot from one of them or the other, they work perfectly, and benchmark perfectly. What would be causing the Status Critical when in RAID Mode?

    PS I have also updated the BIOS to Version 1.60
    Installed both Win 8.1 and Win 10 Technical Preview, installs just fine, but then when running the system, browser, or any programs, it occasionally crashes. Then when I checked the SSD's in the RAID Utility, says Status Critical.
    Last edited by Lonewolfblue; 11-28-2014, 10:42 PM.

  • #2
    Re: RAID issue

    So all you get from the AMD RAID Utility is Status Critical, without any other information? There must be some other information about why the utility decided the RAID volume is critical.

    But besides the occasional crashes you get, the RAID arrays would seem to operate fine with their status as critical, is that right?

    If you have those SSDs in a RAID array in Windows 8.1, open the Windows Properties of the array, and then click Tools. Find the Optimize button and click it.

    You'll see a list of drives and RAID volumes, the Media type column should say "Solid state drive" for single SSDs or SSDs in RAID arrays. The optimizer will run a manual TRIM on SSDs, even those in RAID arrays apparently.

    I have seen some models of SSDs in RAID arrays that are not recognized by the Optimizer as Solid state drives, instead they are seen as Hard disk drives.

    What do you see in the Optimizer screen for RAID arrays of your SSDs?

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    • #3
      Re: RAID issue

      I just installed 8.1 again with it in Raid 0. The Media Type is showing up as Hard Disk Drive. I Optimized it as well.

      When I installed, the system crashed once and had to restart the install. It's now all installed. I just now rebooted as well and went into the Raid Utility, and it showed Functional.

      I'm now thinking of going to the OCZ site and download the Toolbox and maybe try updating the firmware. Any idea why it's showing as Hard Disk Drive and not Solid State Drive?

      As for the Status Critical question you had, it would run for a little while, and then crash. Sometimes would run a few minutes, and sometimes 15-20 minutes, then crash.

      One other thing to add, when I bring it up in the Device Manager, it's listed as "AMD 2+0 Stripe/RAID0 SCSI Disk Device". I also downloaded the Toolbox and it doesn't show any drives, says there's no supported drives. Probably due to being in RAID? So I'm unable to update drivers or firmware unless I take them out of RAID and install Win 8.1 on the single drive.
      Last edited by Lonewolfblue; 11-30-2014, 02:24 PM.

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      • #4
        Re: RAID issue

        I found that a RAID 0 array (Intel board) of OCZ Vertex 4s was seen as a Hard Disk Drive by the Windows 8 Optimizer. I also found that RAID 0 arrays of other SSDs (Intel, Samsung, SanDisk) were recognized as Solid state drive by the Windows 8.1 optimizer. Why the OCZ drives in a RAID array were seen as Hard disk drives by the optimizer, I don't know.

        I was thinking that IF the AMD RAID software is also seeing your SSDs in RAID 0 as HDDs, then some of the SMART data from the SSDs that only applies to HDDs would cause the software to think the drives were having problems, or even failed. That is just a theory, I have no idea if it is what your problem is. It doesn't seem to be given the status can be functional.

        It is common for some SSD utilities like the OCZ Toolbox to be unable to recognize the SSDs in RAID arrays. Not all utilities are like that, but many are.

        But firmware updates on SSDs in RAID arrays, or with the SATA mode in RAID, never works. You must use AHCI mode for firmware updates. I've seen some SSDs that have firmware updates that run in a DOS bootable environment on a USB flash drive. You could change the SATA mode to AHCI, but never boot into Windows since you boot into DOS on the USB drive. So you flash the firmware in AHCI mode, and change back to RAID before booting into Windows.

        If you only have a Windows firmware update program, then you are stuck doing it the way you described. Be sure you can do a firmware update on an OS drive, sometimes firmware updates will wipe a SSD of all data.

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        • #5
          Re: RAID issue

          Well, I think I figured out the problem. My system started crashing in Windows 8.1 as well (when not in RAID). But the drives didn't show Critical status. It would run a while, then could go blue on me. So after a couple days, I needed to transfer some pics from my camera to the computer, so I plugged in my USB 3 card reader and put in the SD card. Picked it up just fine. But as soon as I dropped the files from the card on the desktop, it crashed. After a restart, did it again. Then tried plugging it into the USB 2 port in the back, and it worked just fine. So I decided to go to the manufacturers website and see what they had for drivers, and I downloaded the latest USB 3 drivers for the motherboard, and all is good. The computer has not crashed since. I think the whole problem has been caused by the drivers that Windows was using for the USB 3. Since then, I've also updated all the other drivers for the motherboard as well, just to be sure. Including the RAID drivers. When I get time, I'm thinking of putting the SSD's back into RAID and install Windows 8.1 again and update the drivers to the latest from the manufacturer, and see if it fixes the problem when in RAID as well.

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