PC Drivers & Software

[sutty]

So I have been having this issue of installing a OS on a second NVMe drive or on a second array with two in RAID1 or 0. It was wrecking my head as I need to duel boot my system with a second Windows 11 Pro install. A OS installed worked fine on the first Array. But the second fails randomly every time.

Been researching it and even ordered the second drive to make the RAID0 or 1 array that was only meant to be a "legacy" mode disk. Turns out its a known issue, that I found in the driver folder under a .rtf file. Which has release notes for the current driver. It doesn't matter if the second array is a legacy, RAIDable, Volume or a RAID1 or 0.

Version: 9.3.2.00255 (from the AMD support section latest RAID driver)

Known issues
⦁ System freeze or hung while perform long run ACPI (S3) cycles with password enabled.
⦁ Under RaidXpert2 and rcadm.exe, device id for some NVMe shows up as xb000 rather than actual NVMe device ID.
⦁ OS Installation may fail when OS installed on other than first RAID array.
⦁ Hibernate Suspend and resume performance drop in RAID-5 on specific HDDs.
⦁ IO performance impact on VBS enabled systems.

Its the third one that is my issue and I am wondering when it will be fixed. Does anyone know? Very little online about it from what I can find.

[FunkZ]

If I understand correctly, you are running more than one array of RAID1 or 0 drives, both of which require at least two drives each. So how are you running four or more NVMe drives without an add-in card?

You can technically have one array consisting of two drives, on the motherboard, and have multiple partitions on that array in order to dual boot different operating systems. However most desktop motherboards have one drive on the CPU and one on the chipset and do software RAID, so I would advise against this. You may want to consider an add-in NVMe PCIe card to do the RAID level you want.

[sutty]

Hi and thanks for your reply. Just to give more information on the setup.

Spec:

CPU: Ryzen 9 7950X3D

Motherboard: Asus Rog Strix x670e-a gaming

GFX: XFX Merc310 black 7900xtx

Storage: 2x WD Black SN850x 2TB (raid0 array1)

2x WD Black SN850x 1TB (raid not important)

On this am5 board and with this CPU there is enough PCIe lanes to not have PCIe Bifurcation. Allowing the first NVMe slot to be used at x4 and the GFX at x16. This is all tested and working as expected. Also the second array or drives being on the chip set are not an issue as this is not meant for performance. As it is going to be business use. The primary array is the performance array and runs at X4 speeds. I'll most likely be taking the 4th drive out when the issue is resolved and just have it as a single disk. But not to sure on this just yet. So yes the second array is half speed. But not an issue as it's not intended to be a performance array.

So to give more detail. Originally it was only planned to be 1 raid0 array with a 3rd drive as a legacy drive with the second OS on it.

The 4th drive was gotten to do some testing with this issue while it was still relatively cheap to do it.

While in legacy config on the 3rd disk the OS install still crashes out randomly with different issues. Added the 4th drive and reconfigured for RAID and it still has the issue. RAID type and even just the volume or Raid aware jbod options all have this issue when you try install an os on a second array. As per the known issues I only found in the rtf file in the driver's fo

[FunkZ · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the additional info, that is a very nice motherboard with 4 onboard M.2 slots! AMD having a known issue installing an OS on the 3rd or 4th slot drive when using RAID is not so nice.

It appears 9.3.2.00255 was just released 12/23. Checking older versions lists 9.3.2.00158 released 12/22 - a year older. Wonder if the older driver has the same issue, have you checked? Because if 158 also had the bug and it was not fixed in 255 a year later that does not bode well for it ever getting fixed.

Unfortunately in your scenario to use onboard RAID for the primary OS and a 3rd drive for secondary OS you may need to put it in a PCIe riser.

[sutty]

So just checked there, and you are indeed correct. In the readme.rtf of the 158 drivers, the same issue is listed. So I am guessing you are right and a PCIe NVME card will be needed if I want to have an array on the onboard and a second OS installed on an indepent array or drive. Which is a shame.