Can I setup two RAID arrays on a single intel z97 controller?

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Let me preface this by saying that I have never setup a RAID array myself, other than by using software RAID 0 in Windows for a set of storage drives.

I purchased a new ASUS Maximus VII Hero motherboard, two SSDs, and 3 HDDs. I planned on running the two SSDs in RAID 0 and the 3 HDDs in RAID 5, as the board has two controllers: One with 6 ports (on the intel chipset) and one with 2 ports, on an ASMedia chipset. The intel chipset supports all the standard RAID modes, but I later found out (or at least it seems to be the case) that the ASMedia one doesn't support RAID. Short of buying a PCI-E SATA card that supports RAID 0, can I set up these two arrays on the 6 port supported by the intel chipset, and boot off the SSDs?

Mirrana

Posted 2014-06-19T14:17:00.693

Reputation: 672

Hey, to be honest from everything I've read and my own testing with my drives I've seen no benefit and even negative affects of having RAID 0 with SSD drives. It does however put you at risk of loosing all your data on both drives. So IMO I would Raid the 3 HDD's and run the two SSD's separate drives one for OS and one for most often used software (intensive like Photoshop, games, etc.). – CharlesH – 2014-06-19T14:44:23.833

I have to agree with CharlesH that two SSD's in RAID 0 is pretty much pointless, except for bragging to people who don't know any better. In addition, those SSD's won't have TRIM support in RAID, so you'd effectively be cutting performance as well as killing your SSD's. – dzampino – 2014-06-19T15:10:23.870

@MattSteelblade TRIM is supported on intel RAID now, has been for a while. – Mirrana – 2014-06-19T15:35:39.087

1I stand corrected, TRIM is supported for RAID 0 according to the Intel documentation – dzampino – 2014-06-19T16:33:09.260

Were you able to setup both raids arrays with your motherboard? I am planning on doing the same thing. I emailed Gigabyte about one of the Z97 boards and their response was "Unfortunately due to the shadow memory limitation, the board can only handle one set of RAID at a time." – Michael C. Irvin – 2014-09-12T01:42:10.563

1I never ended up trying... I bought a separate 2 port sata raid controller card that supports raid 0 – Mirrana – 2014-09-12T02:26:32.380

I've seen benchmarks for SSDs in RAID 0 on z77 and z87 and the results were positive. Not sure on z97. -- but with the former the performance of the firmware RAID controller is based on CPU / speed, so having a high end CPU and/or stable overclocking might help -- Source: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?287673-Samsung-840-Pro-in-Raid-0-on-z77-z87-

– BrainSlugs83 – 2014-10-15T22:10:42.090

On a side note -- RAID 5 is usually pretty slow (you can speed it up with enterprise~ish hardware, by adding things like battery backed write caches, etc.) -- but what I'm getting at is: the Z97 firmware based RAID 5 probably isn't that much slower than a software based OS implementation (even Windows can do this) -- so, for future researchers: it might be best to setup the RAID 0 boot array in hardware, and the RAID 5 redundant array in software. This approach should overcome the hardware issues you're experiencing at a slight performance cost. YMMV. – BrainSlugs83 – 2014-10-15T22:14:41.380

Did anyone end up doing this? I'm doing the exact setup with the same MB except probably a RAID 1 for the boot partition with SSDs. – Alex K – 2015-04-04T00:40:41.247

Answers

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According to this admittedly rather old document on Intel's site (as well as this and this) you should be able to create a RAID 5 and a RAID 0 in those steps. Intel Matrix RAID used to be a separate technology featured in several southbridge chips, but from what I have researched, is now a part of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology. While the document recommends using a RAID that's actually redundant for your OS, I don't see any physical limitations from doing so.

To summarize: Setup your RAID 0 first, install the OS and the RST drivers and then setup the RAID 5.

dzampino

Posted 2014-06-19T14:17:00.693

Reputation: 680

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Well ive been able to set up two raid 0 volumes with different sizes on the same motherboard and this works so it should be no problem.

After installing the disks check if they are available in your bios make sure that raid is activated on the Intel controller then boot again with ctrl+i add a new raid volume and select the settings you want to have.

I have only used the Intel sata ports.

Wilfred

Posted 2014-06-19T14:17:00.693

Reputation: 1

Asked: 2014-06-19T14:17:00.693

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