Anyone successfully created a RAID with ASUS Hyper M.2 card?

I’ve spent the most of the day trying to do this. Previously I was using these 4 SSDs on this same card as individual plotting drives without any difficulty, but thought I’d try a RAID 0 to see if it’s any faster.

It isn’t a motherboard/PCIe lanes/bifurcation issue. The array is visible in the BIOS, with the correct size. However, it isn’t showing in Windows, either in the File Manager (This PC) or in the Disk Manager. I haven’t seen a place yet to assign a volume name or format the array.

Seems like I’m missing something simple, but I’m brain fried now.

Not much info to go on, what motherboard and processor are you using? What other pci devices are you running? And I’m sure you probably aren’t but you’re not trying to use risers are you?

It’s an ASUS WRX80 motherboard and Threadripper Pro 3975WX. The only other cards are an Adaptec 71605 and an MSI GT 710 GPU. No riser cards. There’s a 5th plotting SSD and another SSD for the OS on the motherboard.

The RAID has all 5 SSDs (10 TB total) in the BIOS and is apparently called “array 2.” All 5 drives are now not showing in Windows. The OS SSD is still visible in Windows and is called “array 1” in the BIOS for some reason.

It seems like the problem is related to the RAID creation procedure using this Hyper M.2 card, or something about hardware RAID in general, rather than something unique to my rig. But I could be wrong.

I’m thinking now the issue is the RAID drivers. I haven’t loaded any, and ASUS support seemed to think it wouldn’t be necessary to do this manually. This is probably true only during Windows install.

The raid will likely present itself as a format requiring drivers. Those probably came with the motherboard or are available on the motherboard web site. If the motherboard has created the raid that is. Otherwise you can always use Linux. :slight_smile:

1 Like

You’re correct, I just figured it out a little while ago. Drivers and the install executable were on a disk that came with the motherboard. I’m an idiot.
Although, to be fair, there have been plenty of people with this question on various forums and ASUS tech support didn’t know the answer, either. Their instructions could be improved significantly.

You know what though, I haven’t used windows raid much, but I suspect you might be better off just disabling the raid in the bios and using the windows software raid instead. Software raid is pretty good these days and this way if your motherboard dies, you can still access your disks no matter which motherboard you get. I’m pretty sure using the motherboard BIOS, you run the risk of needing to get the same motherboard later, BUT I could be wrong. I’m speaking architecturally from old experience - things may have moved on. Someone else may be able to advise.

1 Like