ASUS Z170 WS Help

[ianamck]

Looking for some guidance, help, suggestions or a big hammer.

I have the following spec for my newest build.

Cosmos II Case
Asus Z170-WS Intel Z170 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB)
Captain 360 AIO Cooler
2 x Asus GeForce GTX 980Ti DC3 OC Strix 6144MB GDDR5
2 x Samsung 950 Pro 256GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe
2 x Samsung 850 Evo SSD 1TB
2 x Western Digital 1 TB Sata Drive
EVGA SuperNova P2 1000W PSU
LG UH12NS30 12x Blu-Ray Combo Drive SATA
IcyBox Standard 5.25" Drive Bay USB 3.0 Multi Card Reader eSATA
Corsair Gaming Audio Series SP2500 High-Power 2.1 PC Speaker
System
Asus PG279Q ROG Swift 27"
Windows 10 Professional (USB Stick)


So here is the problem, I have read forum after forum and watched too many online guides and videos to the point I am either stupid, crazy or have missed something simple by confusing myself.

I have the basics only installed and powered up, that is the MOBO with CPU and AIO cooler, both sticks of memory, only one of the graphics cards and both M.2 drives installed directly on the MOBO.

What I am trying to achieve is raid 0 the two Samsung 950 Pro M.2 drives (not a problem) and install Windows 10 professional. I can create the raid in the UEFI reboot with the USB key inserted. Boots to Windows installation and start the install. The no drive is seen but I can load the Intel RST drivers and it find the raided drives but that is where it falls over. Will not let me move forward from that point.

Have tried all sort of settings changes in the UEFI but still fails at the same point.

Any help or pointers would be helpful as the ASUS support just say the drives are not supported which doesn't make any sense as the MODO has native RAID support for M.2 drives.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Try one drive on its own first.

Im not 100% sure you can run an OS on the raid.

I know with the Intel NVMe drives you can only use them in raid as storage NOT for an OS (ie: its not bootable)

 

[ianamck]

Tom I am honoured by such a fast response but even more so as I am such a fanboy for your videos. Most of my hardware choices above are down to you.

A real shame its not bootable. Do you have any other suggestions to use the M.2 slots Tom?

Many Thanks

 

[tinytomlogan]

Im not 100% but try a drive on its own and see how you get on.

If there is trickery to get it to work Im not aware of it

 

[ianamck]

*** update ***

Despite the frustration I eventually managed to solve the problem.

I now have my two Samsung 950 PRO (NVMe M.2 SSD) in Bootable RAID 0 . Running at expected beneficial speed increase. How did I do it??

Starting from the UEFI Bios I selected F11 for the EZ Tuning Wizard. Select the RAID tab. Select PCIE Raid and follow through the steps to use my 2 Samsung drives for RAID. PC reboots and then set all the CSM settings to UEFI Only.

Downloaded RUFUS from here https://rufus.akeo.ie/ and created a UEFI bootable USB drive from a Windows 10 ISO. Restarted the PC with USB key in place. Followed the steps to install windows. When it comes to the select drive part the newly created RAID drive will NOT show up. Clicked on load drivers and selected the IRST Intel drivers which you can download from here https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25165/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST-RAID-Driver from another USB key. It will take a minute or two to find the drive but eventually it will show up. Select the RAID drive and click next. Windows will start installing.

It sounds so simple and it turned out to be the case in the end. After windows had loaded and installed all the drivers and updates a reboot later I tested the RAID drive for speed and I am getting in excess of 3000Mbps (3GB) per second.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

 

[AlienALX]

Sounds like you hadn't built the array dude. You need to do that in the RAID bios Windows can't do it as it's hardware level stuff.

I also remember on my old X79 board there were two RSTE controllers and only one was hardware bootable (the other was only good for soft RAID within Windows like).

Any way, glad you're all sorted My bro lives in Caterham, nice place !

 

[ianamck]

*** update ***

Not sure what happened but original reply magically disappeared

Despite the frustration I eventually managed to solve the problem.

I now have my two Samsung 950 PRO (NVMe M.2 SSD) in Bootable RAID 0 . Running at expected beneficial speed increase. How did I do it??

Starting from the UEFI Bios I selected F11 for the EZ Tuning Wizard. Select the RAID tab. Select PCIE Raid and follow through the steps to use my 2 Samsung drives for RAID. PC reboots and then set all the CSM settings to UEFI Only.

Downloaded RUFUS from here https://rufus.akeo.ie/ and created a UEFI bootable USB drive from a Windows 10 ISO. Restarted the PC with USB key in place. Followed the steps to install windows. When it comes to the select drive part the newly created RAID drive will not show up. Clicked on load drivers and selected the IRST Intel drivers which you can download from here https://downloadcenter.intel.com/dow...ST-RAID-Driver from another USB key. It will take a minute or two to find the drive but eventually it will show up. Select the RAID drive and click next. Windows will start installing.

It sounds so simple and it turned out to be the case in the end. After windows had loaded and installed all the drivers and updates a reboot later I tested the RAID drive for speed and I am getting in excess of 3000Mbps (3Gbps) per second.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.