bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

[ron7000]

what's the deal with updating the bios on asrock motherboards supporting raid?
It's a brand new system so it's not that big a deal i just have to reload windows but i want to know for future reference what the ramifications are.

It's an Asrock Z97 Extreme 6 board that came with bios version 1.3.
After getting windows 7 installed i went to asrock to make sure i had the latest drivers and decided to update the bios to 1.4.
The only things i had changed in the bios prior to initial install of windows 7 was to set the SATA mode to RAID, I have two SSD disks as RAID 0 for my operating system on sata ports 0 and 1. And also in storage config I changeed them from "hard disk" to "solid state disk".
These 2 SSD's are the only drives in the system currently.
After updating the bios by running the executable from within windows, system rebooted and successfully updated bios but then said no operating system or no bootable system. I go in and look under the raid control panel and see one of the SSD's marked as RAID and the other marked as non-raid. and within storage configuration those SSD's reset to AHCI along with being called hard disk drive and not SSD.

i plan on connecting my other two 3-tb drives that were RAID1 in my other system which has all my data,
from this experience should i never update the bios again since I have windows 7 installed across two drives as RAID 0?
what about other drives connected that are RAIDed?

my current state is no bootable system.
Is there a way to fix this, or do i need to redo the RAID0 which loses all data then reinstall windows?
Was there something i should have done before updating the bios to preserve the existing raid0 SSD's having the operating system?

and for my other two drives which are RAID1 having my data, can i just connect those and will they be recognized as RAID1 and just show up in windows? Or do i have to configure something in the bios or raid controller? or should i play it safe and copy all the data to a separate single drive?

[parsec]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

Something about this does not make sense IMO. I use RAID mode all the time and do BIOS updates whenever they are available and have never had any problems. That is with a Z97 Extreme 6 board, two ASRock Z87 boards, or two ASRock Z77 boards.

You did not mention this in your post, but all BIOS updates reset all BIOS options to their default values. For the Intel SATA mode, the default is AHCI. If you use RAID mode and RAID arrays, after every BIOS update you must reset the SATA mode to RAID before the PC tries to boot for the first time after the update.

The same goes for drive type option for each drive, after a BIOS update (and a CMOS/BIOS reset) the drive type will be set to its default, which is Hard Disk Drive.

Sorry to say, but this is all BIOS update 101 and RAID 101 material.

After a BIOS update or reset, at the end of POST a screen is displayed giving you the option to to go into the BIOS to set your BIOS options as needed. If that is ignored, you get default BIOS values.

This is where the BIOS profile feature in the Tools section is a very handy feature to use. Once all your BIOS settings are set as you need them, you say them in a named profile. Then after a BIOS update or clear, you simply load the profile, save and exit, and all is fine.

Since you were in RAID mode before the BIOS update, you should be able to set the SATA mode to RAID now, and your RAID arrays will be back. RAID arrays are much harder to ruin than some people say they are.

I have two, non-default BIOS option settings that I must have, so I am accustomed to setting them again (via a profile) after a BIOS update.

FYI, the Windows BIOS update method is the least reliable, Instant Flash is the preferred method.

Let us know if changing to RAID mode now does not work for you. That should be the ONLY thing you need to do.

If the two RAID 1 drives were created on a fairly recent Intel based board, you should have no problem connecting them to your new board and they will be seen as a RAID 1 array. Assuming of course the Intel SATA mode is set to RAID.

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

thanks, lesson learned about what you said in bold. i sort of figured that going in with the bios update but also knew if things went horribly wrong it was just an hour wasted and i reinstall windows. and is also why my data is not connected yet.

i have to troubleshoot more but in the raid screen during POST it seems to give me no options to correct the problem. going from memory at the moment i want to say it said raid array failed, and it showed disk on sata0 as raid and the disk on sata1 as non-raid... this is after i went back in the bios and changed things from the default ahci back to raid. so i'm a little confused as to how easily the raid volume got corrupted from doing so little. it was literally..... system working with 2 ssd as raid0 for operating system.... update bios and reboot.... raid0 failed no way to correct. or maybe i had an actual disk failure, or +1 for the raid0 instability experience.

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

and so it would seem the raid controller on this board is a little lacking.
tried everything i could last night but ended up recreating the raid array and reinstalling windows, system working now so it's not a bad ssd drive.
there was nothing i could do within the raid screen, out of the 6 options only delete array was selectable. the others were grayed out.
this was with it saying array failed in red, one disk saying raid member and the other disk saying non-raid member (or however it was worded).

what i am a little confused about is how after a bios update, ok so the sata mode goes back to ahci and tries to read my 2 drives which were raid and it fails. that would be because it can't read the partition table, expecting a normal partition table on one disk when it's a raid volume?

so does that mean something gets written to disk when in ahci mode just on boot that kills the raid array?
because when i went back in to the bios and set it back to RAID mode it did not work, my array still came up as failed which is a little scary ! My last motherboard a p6x58d i had raid1 on 2 drives for data and that bios would hickup once in a great while and would go to default values the only ramification to that was i had to go back in and set my ram back to DDR3-1600. with this asrock i'm a little worried. i've managed raid arrays at work nothing huge and i agree the raid array is generally hard to ruin you usually have to delete a volume if it's not a bad disk. but what happened to me was attempt to boot raid volume when sata set to ahci and it caused raid array fail with no means of correction.

[parsec]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

and so it would seem the raid controller on this board is a little lacking.
tried everything i could last night but ended up recreating the raid array and reinstalling windows, system working now so it's not a bad ssd drive.
there was nothing i could do within the raid screen, out of the 6 options only delete array was selectable. the others were grayed out.
this was with it saying array failed in red, one disk saying raid member and the other disk saying non-raid member (or however it was worded).

what i am a little confused about is how after a bios update, ok so the sata mode goes back to ahci and tries to read my 2 drives which were raid and it fails. that would be because it can't read the partition table, expecting a normal partition table on one disk when it's a raid volume?

so does that mean something gets written to disk when in ahci mode just on boot that kills the raid array?
because when i went back in to the bios and set it back to RAID mode it did not work, my array still came up as failed which is a little scary ! My last motherboard a p6x58d i had raid1 on 2 drives for data and that bios would hickup once in a great while and would go to default values the only ramification to that was i had to go back in and set my ram back to DDR3-1600. with this asrock i'm a little worried. i've managed raid arrays at work nothing huge and i agree the raid array is generally hard to ruin you usually have to delete a volume if it's not a bad disk. but what happened to me was attempt to boot raid volume when sata set to ahci and it caused raid array fail with no means of correction.

The Intel RAID "controller" in any Intel chipset is really not a hardware type RAID controller, Intel RAID has always been of the software type. ASRock has nothing to do with its functioning, besides ensuring the correct Intel RAID option ROMs are in the BIOS/UEFI file, which they have always done fine, and actually better than some other mobo manufactures.

Actually, you got bitten by a Windows quirk, and the worst case RAID situation for that quirk. That is, Windows SATA mode detection and driver loading scheme, on a RAID 0 OS volume.

Windows actually loads a different SATA driver if the SATA mode in the BIOS is changed from RAID to AHCI, but won't do opposite. You can change to RAID mode after an AHCI driver is loaded, but Windows won't load the RAID driver, as you experienced yourself.

That means once the SATA mode is changed to AHCI in the BIOS, Windows recognizes the change, and loads an AHCI driver, and notes that in the Registry. But when we try to change to RAID mode from AHCI, Windows does not allow that to happen, the RAID driver is not loaded. Keep in mind that an installed driver is not necessarily a loaded driver.

If you use RAID arrays but not for the OS drive, and the SATA mode is changed from RAID to AHCI for whatever reason, Windows still boots, but the RAID arrays don't work. That can be fixed with a Registry trick, reboot the PC into the BIOS, set the SATA mode to RAID, save and exit. The RAID driver is then loaded, and the RAID arrays work again.

But what happens when the OS is stored on a RAID array, and an AHCI driver is loaded because the SATA mode changed? The RAID array fails of course, so no OS boots, and we also can't fix the driver loading problem since the Registry in on the OS drive that did not boot!

An OS on a RAID 0 array is always one non-RAID boot away from death. Why Windows will not load the RAID driver when the SATA mode is changed from AHCI to RAID is the question we've wondered about for years now, since the registry trick seems to work fine. We can only live with this very carefully.

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

well i confirmed it again last night.
Asrock just released bios v1.6 the other day and in my messing around i goofed up windows so i needed to reinstall windows anyways.

- i put the bios v.16 rom to a 2GB usb stick formatted as FAT32.
- entered uefi screen, selected instant flash, successfully updated.
- upon reboot i repeatedly hit F2/Del to enter uefi, changed sata mode from defaulted ahci back to raid and also set sata0 and sata1 to SSD.
- upon nextreboot, when raid screen came up it showed my "win7ssd" volume as FAILED in red, with disk 1 as raid member and disk 2 as non-member. The raid menu gives me no options to fix, only create new volume or delete existing volume


so if this is normal, is the procedure then: whenever updating bios disconnect all hard drives that were in raid mode?

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

just saw your reply after i posted,
I understand what you are saying about Windows and AHCI/RAID drivers being loaded at boot.
Pretty sure this is not what's happening in my case, my problem happens well before windows tries to even load.
In fact I get a "No operating system available" message in white letters on a completely black screen, just like if i put a brand new blank drive in the system and tried to boot it.
And I'm willing to bet i can recreate this raid failure problem simply by switching sata mode in the uefi from raid to ahci and reboot, it will fail the array volume before windows ever sees it.

so like you said it's an Intel 'software' raid that's an add-on to the Asrock bios/uefi... which i was starting to think and was afraid of being the case. I had hopes that it was an oversight or something that could be fixed by asrock if mentioned. But it looks like a miscommunication between the bios/uefi and the intel raid mechanism.
I had bought this board for all the sata ports and considered doing raid0 on 2 ssd drives since i have them,
but from this experience i'll just live with one ssd for the OS, and now decided to split my two 3TB data drives that were in RAID 1 on my old system into 2 separate AHCI drives when connected on this asrock.

my old asus board would once in a great while fail to boot and reload the bios with default values, the only problem with that was my ram went back to default DDR-1333 and I've have to go back in and set it to DDR-1600. My raid1 data drives were never affected, and system always booted and worked. I'm now very afraid of this happening on the asrock board given this experience with the raid volume failing, if the bios for whatever reason defaults and sata mode = ahci, it seems to kill the raid volume.... i can't imagine it's limited to just sata ports 0 and 1 having the operating system. And last night i proved that during boot even if you enter the uefi immediately by hitting f2 and change sata mode back to raid, it did not help.

my only thought now is to ask at intel and look for updating the intel raid driver/firmware. i don't remember what version that raid controller firmware is, and i was not at all impressed how it displays visually when hitting Ctrl-I to enter it to configure drives as raid 0,1, etc. everything is always grayed out except for create and delete.

and now that i think about it given where the problem seems to lie, i would think it would be more common of a problem at least anyone running the same version/type of intel raid controller... it would/could/should happen on other consumer motherboards besides Asrock.

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

this raid stuff on consumer desktop motherboards is somewhat new to me, all i really know is the motherboard supports raid.

Intel Matrix RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

^^ is this what i'm dealing with, when you say it's not "hardware raid"?
I don't have the motherboard up and running in front of me, and when i do i don't have access to post online yet so i'm going from vague memory seeing the screen from boot up...

how does the raid software or firmware, or ROM if that's what it called, get updated? Is that something i can do as an end user, or is it gotten from Intel and provided by Asrock as a bios/uefi update?
I'm referring to the software/firmware that controls that raid screen during boot up that you do Control-I to enter. That's where I think my problem is... where it says raid volume failed and all i can do is delete it and start over.
thanks.

[ron7000]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

this is probably my last update,
i think i confirmed last night it was the uefi update itself that nukes the raid volume, because in playing around with my 2 ssd's without doing a bios update i could do pretty much anything short of manually deleting the volume in the raid screen,
i could switch sata mode from raid to ahci and back to raid and that did NOT fail the raid volume shown in the intel raid screen (that you hit Ctrl-I to enter) which i thought would happen. And under boot menu there is boot failure guard count which was set to 3 meaning after 3 failed boot attempts the uefi automatically reloads default settings (sata mode = ahci) which i thought could be a big problem but seems to not be the case.

so fact: bios update via launching the executable within Windows 7, from version 1.3 to 1.4,
and bios update via instant flash updating from 1.4 to 1.6 both killed the raid 0 volume on sata 0,1 ports where i had to redo it from scratch losing all data on that volume.
Whether the bios update would have killed any other raid volumes connected... like if i had my 2 data drives that are raid 1 connected on sata ports 2,3... i don't know.

with current uefi version 1.6 I have Intel RST Option ROM 13.0.0.2075 for the RAID.

have decided not to use 2 ssd as raid 0, I benchmarked them vs using one in ahci mode and the sequential read is almost double but that's the only benefit, so not worth it. in fact not going to use raid at all.

[parsec]

Re: bios update kills raid no bootable system, Z97 extreme 6

I'm at a loss regarding why your OS RAID array keeps failing. Coincidentally, I just installed Windows 10 TP on a RAID 0 array of two SSDs this week, but on my Z87 Extreme 6 board. So far no problems, even with questionable driver functioning with Windows 10, which so far seems fine.

Granted, I have not done a UEFI/BIOS update on that board, and I'm beginning to wonder if your issue is related to doing the UEFI update via the Windows program update method. I avoid that method at all costs, due to its tendency to fail more than other methods. I always use Instant Flash.

I need to review your last few posts to see if I can see what's going on.

The Intel RAID option ROM is embedded in the UEFI/BIOS file. It can be updated in a UEFI update, as I have seen happen occasionally. It is possible for people to do it themselves, but that is obviously a BIOS/UEFI modification. Relative to BIOS mods, it is one of the easier things to do, but you must know how to do it, have the tools to do so, as well as the different option ROM. All are possible to find and do, but has a learning curve that is fairly steep.

BTW, our board and other ASRock boards have in their UEFI the equivalent of the Intel Ctrl-I RAID utility. It's in the Advanced screen, at the bottom.

Out of time now, more later...