Regular NVMe as OS and RAID0 on dimm.2 two NVMe disks not possible?

[mirekti]

I have three NVMe disks. One is 512G for the OS and two 2GB which I planned on using in RAID0 by installing them in dimm.2 card which came with Asus Zenith Extreme.

It seems this combination is not working. The OS is already installed on the 512GB disk, and when I try to enable raid for the other two disks I get an error : Windows is currently installed to an NVMe disk and upgrading will make the OS unbootable. Also, it says that I shall load Windows on a non-NVMe disk.

Is this a driver limitation or such combination OS on NVMe in regular and two NVMe in RAID0 will not be possible?

[Mr. Fox]

It should work if both of the NVMe drives that you are planning to run in RAID are on the same DIMM.2 card. If you are running Windows 10 switch it to RAID and then boot into Windows Safe Mode the first time and Windows 10 will update itself. If you try booting into Windows normally you will get a BSOD. Also make sure the drive with the OS is in the DIMM.2 slot for the PCH side of the CPU. That would be on the edge with the SATA ports. As far as I know you cannot run the CPU RAID with an OS installation. The CPU RAID is for storage only as far as I know.

If you are running Windows 7 you will have to use a registry tweak in order to switch from AHCI to RAID or it will be unbootable after switching to RAID. Windows 7 is not able to update itself when that change is made.

[mirekti]

I am running Windows 10.

MBO slot - NVMe 512G
dimm.2 card - 2x NVMe
SATA - SSD 4 TB

Installed Windows 10 on NVMe 512G drive and I can see all the disk.
Then I went to device manager and checked Storage controllers, and when I saw two controllers that use PCI bus 65 and 66 concluded these are dimm.2 drives and manually updated the drivers for them with rcbottom drivers.
Then I could see RAID controllers show up in the Device Manager, but three of them and I updated these with rcraid drivers.

Only after that I went to BIOS and changed SATA to RAID, and in set RAID in PBS.
Am I doing it in a wrong order?
Is there a way to do it from my current setup or I'd need to reinstall?
At the moment I have it all set to default i.e.:
All disk with default drivers
SATA set as AHCI
NVMe RAID mode disabled.

[mirekti]

...boot into Windows Safe Mode the first time and Windows 10 will update itself.

But what will be updated? How will Windows know I want to user RAID with those two NVMes in the dimm.2 slot, and no RAID with NVMe disk on the motherboard?

I have just tried to enable RAID for NVMe and left the SATA in ACHI (only my 4th drive is SATA and I don't plan on using it in RAID).
Once I rebooted the system it kept cycling to BIOS only and I wasn't able to enter the Safe mode. Only after I set RAID for NVMe back to Disabled the system booted to safe mode.
To me this looks like all NVMe drives are considered a RAID disks when NVMe RAID is enabled.

[Mr. Fox]

But what will be updated? How will Windows know I want to user RAID with those two NVMes in the dimm.2 slot, and no RAID with NVMe disk on the motherboard?

I have just tried to enable RAID for NVMe and left the SATA in ACHI (only my 4th drive is SATA and I don't plan on using it in RAID).
Once I rebooted the system it kept cycling to BIOS only and I wasn't able to enter the Safe mode. Only after I set RAID for NVMe back to Disabled the system booted to safe mode.
To me this looks like all NVMe drives are considered a RAID disks when NVMe RAID is enabled.

Windows 8.X and 10 will detect the change and update the registry.

Did you change anything on the CPU Storage options? I think you have to enable RAID there in the BIOS for the DIMM.2 RAID.

[GoStepFilmPro]

I have three NVMe disks. One is 512G for the OS and two 2GB which I planned on using in RAID0 by installing them in dimm.2 card which came with Asus Zenith Extreme.

It seems this combination is not working. The OS is already installed on the 512GB disk, and when I try to enable raid for the other two disks I get an error : Windows is currently installed to an NVMe disk and upgrading will make the OS unbootable. Also, it says that I shall load Windows on a non-NVMe disk.

Is this a driver limitation or such combination OS on NVMe in regular and two NVMe in RAID0 will not be possible?

Hello mirekti, I have managed to configure mine ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme with 1x C drive single NVMe Samsung 960 PRO 2TB with MS Windows 10 Pro OS, D Drive 2x NVMe Samsung EVO 970 2TB on Asus raiser card in RAID0 and E drive 6x HDD in RAID10. Starting point was OS already installed on NVMe Samsung 960 PRO 2T and 6x HDD in RAID10 configured. I had the same issue - Asus raiser card with 2 NVMe Samsung EVO 970 2TB installed in M.2 DIMM but system did not see it. What I did - installed AMD\AMD-SATA-RAID-Chipset-Drivers\setup.exe, it complained that OS installed on NVMe but after that have seen some entries of AMD-RAID Bottom Devices and AMD-RAID Controller (storport) in the Device Manager->Storage Controllers. BIOS updated to 1601, in BIOS went to RAIDXpert2, deleted Array3, than created again Array3 and assigned the 2 Samsung EVO 970 2TB to it. Booted, in Computer Management->Device Manager->Storage controllers updated the 2 Samsung NVMe Controllers on PCI bus 65 and 66 with AMD-RAID Bottom Device, in Other Devices selected the AMD... (cannot now recollect the proper naming) and updated the driver with rccfg.inf and than rebooted. After reboot navigated to ...\AMD\AMD-SATA-RAID-Chipset-Drivers\Packages\Apps\RAIDXpert2_NVMe and from that called the setup.exe with the Administrator rights. After a while where no information about installation progress was visible the RAIDXpert2 icon appeared in the taskbar. Now I could login in the WebGUI with admin/admin, created my own UID and password. I could see the Array3 but it was offline. So I decided to delete the Array3 in the WebGUI, create another Array3 and than was able to assign the 2 existing NVMe Samsung EVO 970 2TB to the Array3 and configure it as RAID0. Then went to Computer Management->Disk Management, immediatelly was asked by Windows to configure it and formated it as NTFS. So finally I had the configuration I wanted. You can see some basic speed tests on https://www.facebook.com/GoStepFilmP...ro&__tn__=-R-R