How to set SSD and HDD in the bios (AHCI, IDE...)

[Fking]

I have SSD as primary system drive and 2x512GB HDDs as RAID 1 for storage.

In bios i have options to set them as AHCI, IDE and one more that i forgot...

What is the proper way to set them?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello.


Just be advised if you change the settings at all you may lose access to all the data, especially the RAID, if you're not very aware what you are doing then it's best left as is.



The tutorial linked below will give you some of the basics, but you have been warned.

AHCI : Enable in Windows 7 / Vista


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[DeaconFrost]

I wouldn't bother making any changes until you are ready to do a clean install. That being said, I'd go with AHCI. RAID1 has no place on a desktop computer, so you could break that up and use one of the 500 GB drives in an external cage for backup purposes. RAID isn't ever used for a backup method, and in this case, your just slowing down the drives and wasting 50% of your storage capacity.

 

[Fking]

I wouldn't bother making any changes until you are ready to do a clean install. That being said, I'd go with AHCI. RAID1 has no place on a desktop computer, so you could break that up and use one of the 500 GB drives in an external cage for backup purposes. RAID isn't ever used for a backup method, and in this case, your just slowing down the drives and wasting 50% of your storage capacity.

Hm, why it's not ok for a desktop computer?
I backup as well, but i like to have backup in real time too.
As far as i know raid 1 doesn't decrease performance?

 

[DeaconFrost]

There's really no point in running it on a desktop computer, because that isn't the intended usage. Mirroring was meant for an OS drive, so a server could keep running if one drive died. It was never intended for data reliability. There's a famous saying that states RAID is not a backup. If you can think of all the reasons why you'd need a backup of a file, such as deletion, over-writing, corruption, etc...all of those fail with RAID1 as well. For example, if you delete a file, it's gone from the mirrored drive, too. Recovery of a deleted file is more complicated, as the formatting of the drives is different, thanks to the array.

That all being said, there's overhead involved to keep the drives synced in real-time, which can decrease performance, especially if you aren't using a dedicated RAID controller card (not the built-in soft RAID on many motherboards).

 

[Fking]

"isn't the intended usage" and "famous saying" aren't really solid arguments.

Yes it's not ok if that's your only backup but in my case it's used for saving an important file in case of HDD failure in between backups to outside media.

And the thread is not about if it's good solution or not, but how to properly set them in the bios

 

[Victor S]

Check this
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 - Adding a RAID1 Configuration

 

[DeaconFrost]

"isn't the intended usage" and "famous saying" aren't really solid arguments.

Seems to be a pattern with you, to fire back at the people trying to help you. Might want to reconsider that strategy if you are going to keep posting a lot of questions. We're volunteers here. That being said, I gave the solid arguments above in my posts. Forgive me for trying to speed up your drive performance and give you extra storage space.

As for the question, because you are enabling RAID, you might not be getting the best performance out of your SSD anyway. On some boards, I've heard that AHCI is enabled by default if RAID is the choice. Some might not, so your manual may be able to explain that better. SSDs should be used in AHCI mode whenever possible. What type of drive are the other two in the array? You say 512 GB, which suggests an SSD, unless you meant to say they were 500 GB and they are HDDs.

 

[Fking]

"isn't the intended usage" and "famous saying" aren't really solid arguments.

Seems to be a pattern with you, to fire back at the people trying to help you. Might want to reconsider that strategy if you are going to keep posting a lot of questions. We're volunteers here. That being said, I gave the solid arguments above in my posts. Forgive me for trying to speed up your drive performance and give you extra storage space.

As for the question, because you are enabling RAID, you might not be getting the best performance out of your SSD anyway. On some boards, I've heard that AHCI is enabled by default if RAID is the choice. Some might not, so your manual may be able to explain that better. SSDs should be used in AHCI mode whenever possible. What type of drive are the other two in the array? You say 512 GB, which suggests an SSD, unless you meant to say they were 500 GB and they are HDDs.

The thing is quite often on forums people ask for apples and other members try to help them by offering oranges, that's why i get a little annoyed sometimes and just tried to keep the focus of the thread. Since i've choosed to have raid already and now just need to set it up the best way
That said I know that you are valuable member here and trying to help as well, nothing personal, just trying to keep the focus of the thread.


Now to the issue

as you can see at the moment it's set to RAID, even if just 2 of the 3 drives are in raid.
I boot from the SSD which is alone, and use the 2x512GB HDDs for storage, which are in raid 1

initially when installed windows a week ago, it didn't want to boot, until i choose this

here is the boot order
I have no idea why it says RAID in front of the samsung SSD


here is the SSD performance hope that it is well

 

[Saltgrass]

I don't run a RAID setup, although I have played with one once. I have no opinions about good or bad, but I do have some info to share. Prior comments about RAID performance are also not being addressed, because I have no experience with such.

I found this on an Intel Site that was updated on Jan of this year.

Note If you are using a SATA hard drive, set your BIOS to RAID mode. RAID mode provides the greatest overall flexibility and upgradeability because it allows your system to be RAID ready and enable AHCI.

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — Configure the BIOS for RAID or AHCI on an Intel® Desktop Board

Newer boards may have a separate controller on board. My last two have each had either Marvel, or ASmedia, which could be used for a RAID configuration while leaving the Primary controller as AHCI.

Running SSDs as a RAID may be a different situation, depending on the SSDs, and the RAID controller.

 

[balcitisiyg]

AHCI, IDE are different.
Once the model is settled,
and install the operating system.
Don't try to change this.
Or you may fail to read the disk.
To make the matter worse,
it would be possible to
loss all data on the disk. :shock:

 

[DeaconFrost]

The thing is quite often on forums people ask for apples and other members try to help them by offering oranges, that's why i get a little annoyed sometimes and just tried to keep the focus of the thread.

I've been doing overall I.T. support for 16 years, and have been active on forums such as this for a decade. 99.9% of the time, a person is asking for apples because they are unaware that oranges are a better solution or process than what they are doing. The cardnial rule in any kind of support is to give the person the right/best answer, and that isn't always what they want or are expecting. I'm not pointing any fingers when I say that, I'm just stating it so you see where others are coming from.

I have no idea why it says RAID in front of the samsung SSD.

It will list the drive as RAID because you have it connected to a RAID-enabled port. It basically can be considered as a JBOD array containing only one disk. It's basically just an identifier, and nothing more. The performance seems to be good, the alignment is correct (assuming you have the 100 MB partition on the drive), so unless you have stability issues, I'd say it's working as expected.