How Do I Create a RAID 0 on the P6X58D-E??
 

I have 3 identical Samsung Spinpoint HDD's. I want one boot drive, and two in a RAID 0. According to the booklet that came with the Asus board, "Due to chipset limitation, when set any of SATA ports to RAID mode, all SATA ports run at RAID mode together." This is obviously not what I want. Apparently you can use the Intel Matrix Storage Manager to create a RAID Volume. I don't know how to access it, and I tried to download it from Intel, but it said I didn't have the correct resources or something. What's the best way to do this??

I have the "premium" rather than "extreme" version of the board so it may be a little different, but the Intel RAID controller should be on the CD that came with the mobo. Install that and on boot-up you press a key combo, I think CTL-i or something like that, to access the setup for RAID; it should be documented somewhere in the user manual or briefly display the key combo fairly early in the boot up. Once in the utility, it'll present you options for how you want to configure which HDDs.

EDIT: Here's a link to the ASUS web page for that mobo:
http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_I...DbB&templete=2
If you're missing the original CD, you can download what you need from the site. Follow the directions in the user manual sections 4.4 and 4.5 rather than what I wrote above.

I just went through similar issues.

If Matrix is installed on your system, you usually access it with CTRL-I during POST. If the Windows app is is installed you may have an item in your start menu that says "Intel" and below that should be Intel Control Center and/or Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

Here's the latest version: *Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology

During install, make sure you tell it to install the Intel Control Panel.

During startup, you may need to go into the BIOS and set SATA to RAID mode. To get to the BIOS Setup you press DEL and to get to Matrix prior to Windows booting it's CTRL-I. But it's only in the Windows app that you can set advanced options such as enabling the write-back cache (I just learned about this today) which will increase performance dramatically.

Also note that according to the readme file (http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18859/eng/Readme.txt), "The 'Intel(R) Chipset Software Installation Utility' must be installed on the system after a supported Microsoft Windows* operating system has been installed." You can download this from the Intel website as well. After that's installed you can proceed with the Matrix install.

Adam's right about the keystroke; I'd edited my post to correct the keystroke at the same time he was posting. But it is all in the user manual.

I had tried the ctrl-i thing previously, but it did nothing. I'm downloading the new IRST. The one I downloaded earlier was from last year. What's the difference between the suffixes, enu and cd, though? Right now my hdd's show up in the device manager and in bios, but when i go to My Computer only one drive shows. Why is that? I have them all set to IDE right now in the bios.

enu is the English version.

After you set the RAID using Matrix pre-Windows, you must go into Disk Management and initialize the disk(s). Then they'll all show up in My Computer. Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. A window should pop up asking you if you want to initialize the new disks, but if it doesn't, right click on the new disks and choose Initialize or pick the kind of New Volume you want.

After this, try to launch the Intel app from within windows. You may need to choose "Initialize Disk" again from within the Windows app. Not sure about RAID0; I'm using R5.

And I just don't know enough about this to know whether this will work if your disks are in IDE mode. Might not matter or you might have to set them to RAID in the BIOS but don't worry, this won't force you to put them all in a single RAID. I have six disks in my system: one for OS and Programs, the second for data and other stuff, and the other four in a RAID5 together.

I downloaded the file, and tried to install, but once again got the "This Computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing the software". I already have Win 7 64 installed. Should I initialize the other two drives first?

Looks like I don't have to mess with the BIOS or anything after all. In the disk management window you can set two or more disks to "striped volumes", so I just did that. Should I still go back into the bios and label them as raid, though?

If IRST won't install, are you sure you have the Chipset Installation utility installed? You have to have that on your system first. Not sure why a Win7 system wouldn't meet the specs.

Again, not sure if you really have to go into BIOS and change SATA mode to RAID from IDE. Hopefully others will know this. Maybe this does have to be set to RAID for the IRST SW to install. Just a guess... Worth a try, I suppose. Worst that happens is you get a BSOD or something, and you can just change it back.

What chip do you have?

The readme file I linked to above has all the system requirements. Worth going into it to see if something isn't quite right.

Hey, Adam. I have an Intel i7 930. However, as I stated in my previous post, I was able to configure a 2 drive striped system for increased performance. It didn't say "RAID", but isn't that what it is, anyway? I'm thinking they just wrote it like that for lay people.

Hm, I have the same chip as well, so the only reason I can think of that IRST won't install would be the other app isn't there first or that the BIOS isn't set to RAID. There are probably a million other possibilities as well.

Looks like you've got it sorted out, but now it's just an intellectual challenge to get the IRST to install. The only reason I think that's important is so you can set the write-back cache I mentioned earlier, although there may be another way to do this (and it might not make any difference with R0). The performance increase for my R5 array was huge; it took a disk test that took 16:01 and cut it down to 2:24, a performance boost of 85% in Premiere.

Edit: Hey, guess what? Go back into Disk Management and right click on the grey box to the left of the disk, the part that says "Disk X", and choose Properties, Policies. You can enable the cache there.

cool, man, i'll check it out. any other tips for speeding up performance? i know very little about overclocking, or if it's even worth it.