Getting sas/sata ports to work on x79 extreme 11 motherboard

[danielf]

We cannot get the sas/sata ports to work on the Asrock x79 extreme 11 board. All the other ports work (the ones that are sata only). The only decent reference to the problem is this: http://www.legitreviews.com/ecs-enab...therboard_1833

Any thoughts? Do I need to change something in the bios?

[odiebugs]

Re: Getting sas/sata ports to work on x79 extreme 11 motherboard

We cannot get the sas/sata ports to work on the Asrock x79 extreme 11 board. All the other ports work (the ones that are sata only). The only decent reference to the problem is this: ECS Enables Intel X79 SAS Ports on X79R-AX Motherboard - Legit ReviewsECS X79R-AX SAS Ports Working

Any thoughts? Do I need to change something in the bios?

Are you using Sata or SAS drives ? Are you using the LSI ports for RAID or single storage ?

[danielf]

Re: Getting sas/sata ports to work on x79 extreme 11 motherboard

Are you using Sata or SAS drives ? Are you using the LSI ports for RAID or single storage ?

Using Sata drives (kingston hyperx 3k 240gb SSD). The first 8 grey ports are labelled sas/sata 6gb/s. The next 4 black ports are labelled Sata 3gb/s. The next 2 ports are labelled sata 6gb/s.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X79_Extreme11/images/sata_ports_small.jpg

We have the boot drive and one other storage drive (both kingston hyperx 3k 240gb SSD) attached to the last 2 grey ports. We would like to take advantage of the first 8 grey ports (at 6gb/s) for some kind of raid configuration, possibly including the remainder of the boot drive and/or the other storage drive. We are able to hook up extra drives to the 4 black Sata 3gb/s, and they work fine, but they are only 3gb/s (is 3gb/s alright for a raid configuration?).

We are wondering if there is a reason we can't work with the 8 ports labelled sas/sata 6gb/s?

[odiebugs]

Re: Getting sas/sata ports to work on x79 extreme 11 motherboard

That's good, you have the OS on the two top Native Sata ports, the X79 Sata 3.

What should be done is you plug in all the drives you want on the LSI ports, the bottom 8 grey, then you need to go into the BIOS and disable the 3 boot options, then you reboot and enter (ctrl+H) the LSI RAID ROM, now set up the array.

Then reboot and reset the boot option so your running off the OS, and once inside windows you then install the LSI drivers.

As for the Sata 2 ports, yes they are fine for RAID, but you would only want to put HDD on a Sata 2 and put any SSD's on the two native, and rest on the LSI controller.

Remember after, you might have to enter Disk MGT to make the array active.

P.S. don't update the BIOS unless you install a Ivy bridge-e cpu.


If it was me, I would use the two kings in RAID off the intel Sata 3 for OS, and the Sata 2 for DVD rom, and a RAID LSI storage. If you don't know, the newest RSTe 3 series drivers now have TRIM support, which means they can pass the TRIM commands. But don't worry about TRIM on the LSI, the drives GC will take over so you are fine. But as for the OS on RAID, if you only do light file transfers and run simple software, no heavy media, then there is no advantage for the OS on RAID.