Windows 10: Help installing raid 0 using Samsung 850 EVO SSDs on Dell XPS 8300

Hi there

Not always true - depending on how you can set up your" Logical devices" on Raid 0.

Sometimes you can set SSD's up as SINGLE logical devices on RAID 0 -- this can make perfect sense if you want to have your HDD's on the RAID controller rather than the Mobo -- performance is often better via a dedicated I/O controller than on the Mobo itself.

The other advantage of having an SSD as a SINGLE logical device on RAID 0 is that the RAID controller will also allow that to be used as a boot device too. This of course depends on the RAID controller.

These days typical HDD's are very reliable - and provided you have backup the performance gain with RAID 0 - especially for HDD's is well worth the risk - also if you have decent backup there's no risk anyway.

Slow I/O is often the thing that KILLS systems - far worse than not enough CPU or even poor graphics. !!! Why people go cheap on HDD's when they spend zillions on the rest of their systems will remain for me forever a mystery.

Of course if the SSD's can be attached to the mobo without any problems then no problem -- I wouldn't "double up" 2 X SSD into a logical RAID 0 but you'd have no problems if your RAID controller has enough ports to create these as 2 SINGLE logical RAID 0 drives.

(I know some Geeks will come back and say what's the point of a SINGLE HDD (or SSD) in a RAID 0 configuration -- if they READ the post I said if the controller has enough ports then attaching HDD's / SSD's to the controller is usually better than having the I/O on the mobo for all sorts of reasons - and most RAID controllers (hardware) allow you to specify a boot device too for RAID 0 so my argument still stands - create 2 SINGLE logical devices for the SSD's if there's enough ports on the controller.)

The Driver needs to be added BEFORE windows boots so you'll need to install the driver on an existing system otherwise your Windows won't see the Disks attached to the RAID controller.

@GShep IMO the best way is to re-install windows and load the driver from USB when prompted.

Cheers
jimbo

 

No Problem , happy to help if I can ..........

So you are in Raid Mode now ?

What Intel Chipset is the Raid/AHCI Using ? ICH10R, C200 , C600? etc , perhaps the 14.xxx Driver is not compatible with your Chipset ?

perhaps use Snipping Tool to take a pic of Device Manager too , this is mine on ICH10R :

 

Raid 0 has always been about Performance , with the inherent risk of total data lose if one drive dies , but if you Image the Array regularly as a back up as I do ( good idea with win10 anyway) I have never had a catastrophic failure.

Having just done this ( what the OP is trying) with a spare 128GB SSD on this computer last week , I also am unsure of the Claim about there being 0 speed gain , seems a bit peppy to me considering it is only Sata2 and CrystalDiskMark also says there was a nice gain in speed too, not double but I am using two disparate Drives. (see post #8)

Windows 10 does not require you to use the F6 method of installing Raid Drivers any longer, they are baked in , you can even change the Built in Driver using Nlite as I had too with this ICH10R System ( ICH9/10 does not like the intel 13.xxxx Drivers baked into Win10 )

 

Hi there

It depends on the RAID controller and whether windows recognises it in the first place.-- I have an HP RAID controller on a Proliant Gen 8 Microserver - the RAID array is set up in BIOS as part of the boot process --you get into the RAID setup this is where where you define logical drives and whether the device is set as a boot device. Other devices of course such as USB devices and non RAID HDD's are still bootable via the standard boot menu of course !!!.

I have 2X 5TB as array 1, 2 X 4TB as array 2 and the SSD as a single array of 256GB (the SSD size). The SSD is set as the boot device. I have to do it this way as my SSD is set up on the old DVD port which won't boot if set to AHCI (non RAID) mode and I don't want to use the HDD's for boot. That's a restriction of my hardware but the principle of using a single SSD as a RAID 0 device is fine if you can set in your RAID setup the device as the boot device (or as a bootable device --you can still boot from USB etc of course when you need to).

Windows needs at install time to have this raid driver loaded or it won't see the RAID HDD's. !!!
so you DO need to load drivers in Windows for some RAID hardware.

The problem of installing AFTER windows is installed or booted up - is how do you get windows to see the HDD's in the first place in RAID 0 to install the drivers --that's why its easy to do it at install time - then of course for subsequent boots the driver is already incorporated into Windows.

(If your RAID devices are not going to be used for boot then OK loading windows drivers afterwards will work - but remember some computers won't allow the use of RAID and non RAID mode together - as in my case - it's either RAID or AHCI and if I use AHCI then I can't boot from the SSD !!).

The whole RAID process depends entirely on your hardware. If you are using 100% software RAID then it's a different story --and IMO on Windows if you want software RAID you are better off using STORAGE SPACES as you don't have to have equal size HDD's etc.

RAID 0 on decent hardware really does improve performance - but do take relevant backups because failure of one HDD in an array will cause the whole of that array to fail. Also you lose efficiency if the HDD's in RAID 0 are NOT the same size - each HDD in an array in RAID 0 should be the same size - of course you can have different size HDD's in different arrays but per array they need to be the same size if using RAID 0.

for example array 1 --> 2 X 2TB, array 2 -->2X 3TB -- perfectly OK.

Recent HDD's are quite reliable but still always take backups of important data --and I can also assure you it's no fun re-creating say several TB of multi-media (music etc) and re-tagging zillions of music tracks !!!!. I have external 2 bay HDD docks for backup -- 2 X 2bay hornetek containers --great piece of kit - for backup.

Hornettek X2-U3 Dual Bay USB3.0 hard drive enclosure HT-3210U3: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

(this also has built in RAID if you want to use it - optionally switchable).

Cheers
jimbo

 

Hi GShep , I realise now you are on a Dell XPS Desktop now not a Laptop , for some reason I always think Laptop when I see the Dell name.

I see it has the H67 Chipset and looking online at Dell I think you have the ICH10R like i do on this system ie:

PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_282A&CC_0104.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller"

But please check yourself...................

If so don't install drivers above the 11 series , they are the best for performance 11.2.0.1006 specifically and the 13.xxx drivers cause data corruption in Win10 on the ICH9 and 10 chipsets, especially the Baked in Driver in my experience, at least in Raid.

Which are the Intel AHCI/RAID drivers?

I used this guide to integrate the 11.2 Drivers into the Win10 ISO with Nlite ( and later installed 11.7 to get the RST Software)

[Guide] Integration of drivers into a Win7/8/10 image

KB

 

As note Jimbo ....it depends on the Hardware , and I think you are going to confuse GShep , he has an Intel Sata/Raid Chipset , which does have drivers in Win10, albeit bad ones if he indeed has the ICH10R like me (see previous post) ,in which case the Correct Drivers can be integrated with Nlite , you could do the same for your HP Proliant Server actually, it's now very easy especially following the Tut. on Winraid posted in my previous post, you can add any driver you wish actually , not just SATA/RAID Drivers , eg USB3 etc.

KB

 

Hi there

It's not so easy as that -- since in order to BOOT the RAID device the BIOS setup needs in the RAID controller to be able to set one of my devices as a bootable device.

Si as I said in some cases you need to set up the HARDWARE RAID first - done as part of the BIOS setup menu normally-- otherwise you can't boot from your RAID devices.

Once the RAID controller recognises the boot device then the driver can be integrated into Windows so it's available at normal Windows Boot.

BTW the bootable edition of Free macrium (stand alone boot recovery system) can load RAID drivers so Macrium is fine for backup / restore.

Like all these things it's a question of what hardware controller you have -- also \I don't really like things like nlite --was fine for XP and Vista days but Windows 10 is a bit different.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I don't use Nlite normally either but in this case it was necessary to install Windows 10 with the correct Driver for my ICH10R as if you try to manually downgrade the Win10 Built in Driver , you get a BSOD and can no longer Boot Win10 , which means a reinstall of Win10 and again the same issue over and over , I tried this 3 times with different drivers before learning of the issue with the ICH9/10 Chips at the WinRaid Forums.

[Guide] Integration of drivers into a Win7/8/10 image

KB

 

Gshep,

It sounds like you're missing a critical step here: You need to create the RAID-0 volume.

My steps for this entire operation would be:
0. Download latest Intel storage drivers. Install them, and also extract the driver files to a USB thumb drive (Just in case you need them for a full install of Windows. *Slipstreaming takes more time to do than it does to simply manually load them in during installation.*)
1. Create backup
2. Verify backup
3. Re-verify backup
4. Create backup disaster recovery disc
5. Reboot system
6. Enter system bios and set SATA to RAID mode
7. Save & Reboot bios
8. Enter raid bios (this is often a separate bios from the system bios. It depends on your motherboard.)
9. Create RAID-0 array from SSD's (at this point, all data on both SSD's will be destroyed !!)
10. Reboot, and use your disaster recovery media to install to your newly created 1 TB RAID-0 volume
11. Once the restore is completed, reboot into your OS
12. From Windows: right-click Computer > Manage > Disk Management > right-click C: > Extend Volume > Extend to the maximum size it will permit.

It sounds like Steps 8 & 9 are what you missed.

Steps 10 - 12 allow you to restore from backup without wasting time doing a fresh install of Windows. If, for some reason, you had desired a fresh install of Windows, then replace steps 10 - 12 with steps necessary to install Windows. At this point, you'll be happy to have your USB thumb drive with Intel drivers on it.

If all goes well, you can restore your OS from backup to your new RAID-0 volume, and then simply grow the ~500 GB partition into a ~ 1 TB partition.

 

That is another way to do it ( though I am not sure he has the two SSD's installed yet?) especially if you want/need to convert the Disks to GPT at the same time , I had to do this recently too, I used Macrium Reflect to get Win10 .1670 installed, on one of my computer's.

see here :

Solved Small Wrinkle in Anniversary Update....MBR Disk - Windows 10 Forums


*** Raid is built Into Win 10 for many Raid Controllers , Intel in particular, so there is no need usually to slipstream drivers any longer unless you are on OLD Raid Chipsets.

 

Hi there

In the RAID setup check whether there's an option to set one of the arrays as a bootable device.

If you don't want to use 2 X SSD as a single logical volume - set both up as RAID 0 as INDIVIDUAL logical volumes -- should work fine IMO --but only set one as a bootable device in the RAID setup.

If you could post some pics of the BIOS RAID setup then that would be very helpful if you have any more problems.

RAID itself works fine if controllers initialized properly -- and again the problem with installing AFTER a windows install is that you need to ensure that the HDD's are seen in Windows as their correct configuration when windows goes through its setup. If you start installing Windows BEFORE initialising the RAID configuration you will just see a JBOD ("Just a Bunch of Disks") or even no HDD's at all !!!..

Again it really depends on your hardware controller of course.

GPT or MBR is based purely on Windows file systems --nothing to do with the RAID setup - you can set either GPT or MBR depending on your preference and HDD hardware - but that's got absolotely nothing to do with RAID

For example here on a Linux system I have the following seen by the OS

2 Logical volumes - 9 and 7 TB -- XFS file system --doesn't need GPT or whatever -- so there's nothing in HARDWARE that requires GPT / MBR but just the Windows (rather old-fashioned and increasingly archaic file systems of FAT / NTFS). these are 2 arrays of 2 HDD's each. (/dev/sdb and dev/sdc)

1 logical volume =- SSD as bootable device - 256 GB (/dev/sda)

(For linux users -- install package system-storage-manager -- although designed for LVM it gives a much better readout of what you've mounted etc, As ROOT run command ssm list from a konsole).





Cheers
jimbo

 

I'm thinking I'll 50% improvement with a raid 0.

 

I saw improvement , so I think you will too just not as much as the SSD's would allow if on SATA3 , assuming you have ICH10R like I think?

KB

 

Seems good but yes a few Missing items..... and slightly different than me as you are saving existing Data and installing Raid at the same time. I am assuming you have the ICH10R like me ? you did not confirm this fact but........

- Read how I did it a few weeks ago it in my earlier link with TopGun's instructions so you end up with your existing Data on C : but the GPT partitions created properly (familiarization)

- make Full C Drive Backup set with Macrium before proceeding with anything !

- Use Win10 1607 Nlite ISO to do a Inplace Upgrade of Win10 , this should replace the Intel RST Driver with Version 11.2.0.1006 which you integrated into Nlite. Intergrate boot AHCI and RAID Drivers and customise the Boot.wim per that Tutorial too, + creating ISO is not optional here.

the Inplace Tut. here on Win10Forums:

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums

- ***check RST Driver Version in Windows

-add extra SSD if not installed yet (use intel ports 0 and port 1 for 2 SSD's)

-Make Bootable NEW FULL Backup Set Disk ie Rescue CD for Macrium Reflect. AND test it, be familiar with the processes using it

-Create a Raid 0 Array with the two SSD's via the Ctrl-I boot menu - use 64KB Stripe for OS Array's
this should/will destroy all Data on the SSD's ,so no going back , you did backup right?.

-On reboot set Bios to boot from USB Key 1st if needed

-Reboot >Ctrl I > check Array is seen as "Normal"

-Reboot and USE THE MACRIUM BOOTDISK to Restore the Nlite Image of C Drive ONLY when that is done you must run Fix Windows Boot Problems from the Menu , it should find C and then reset the Boot order for you....Reboot with Fingers Crossed *Smile

 

Hopefully no missed steps above ...but check driver version after doing InPlace Upgrade with Saving your Data Option.

ITWally instructions are much like mine but in your case with the ICH10R (?) you cannot and should not download the latest drivers and install them 1st nor should you try to install the 11.2.0.1006 Driver if a Driver above 12.5 is already in use , as this will likely lead to a BSOD at Boot and an inaccessible Boot Drive.