Intel RST RAID5 "missing" after BIOS flash

[taneric]

Hi gurus,

I have just flashed my Z87X-UD5H motherboard with F7 BIOS (from F6). Before flash, Intel RST was configured with one accelerated RAID5 volume (named "Volume1") made up of 5 SATA disks + 1 SSD. After the flash, Volume1 shows up as "Disabled". The 5 SATA disks + 1 SSD also shows up during "Ctrl-I" as a mixed set of Non-RAID and RAID disks:

• SATA 1: Non-RAID
• SATA 2: Disabled (presumably still recognised as a RAID member)
• SATA 3: Disabled (presumably still recognised as a RAID member)
• SATA 4: Disabled (presumably still recognised as a RAID member)
• SATA 5: Non-RAID
• SSD: Non-RAID

Booting into Windows shows the same situation. No RAID Volume shown. Only individual SATA disks, of which 3 are marked as "disabled". IRST software in Windows states that the 3 "disabled" disks contain "incompatible RAID configurations" and offers to "clear the metadata". I believe doing that will worsen the situation, so I stayed away from any metadata clearing.

Can anyone offer any ways to help recover the RAID5 configuration?

Thanks!

[parsec]

Re: Intel RST RAID5 "missing" after BIOS flash

The obvious thing, which you did not mention mention verifying is, after the BIOS flash your BIOS settings will all be set to default values. Which means the SATA mode is no longer RAID and is now AHCI. Any RAID volumes will no longer work in AHCI mode.

Changing back to RAID mode in the BIOS will hopefully recover the RAID 5 volume, but the accelerated SSD may need to be recreated.

[taneric]

Re: Intel RST RAID5 "missing" after BIOS flash

@parsec,

Sorry I didn't mention that I have reconfigured IRST as RAID mode after Flash. The outcome is as what I described in the 1st post. Within Windows, IRST doesn't even show any RAID volumes.

[parsec]

Re: Intel RST RAID5 "missing" after BIOS flash

Sorry, had to ask, I didn't think you would forget that given your setup.

Only BIOS F7 shown now for downloading? No mention of Option ROM update, a longshot anyway.

What version of IRST are you using? I had problems with corrupted RAID volumes on my Z87 board when using IRST 12.6, which disappeared when I changed to 12.5. IRST 12.8 is the latest official version, and works fine for me.

The IRST status of Disabled is strange, that is not a standard or listed volume state in the IRST documentation. It wasn't Degraded, but Disabled?

Or is the volume status Failed, and three of the disks are Disabled?

What does Windows Disk Management show for those disks? If it want to Initialize any of them, don't do it.

Usually a disk failure would be detected by IRST, so it seems the disks are not bad.

You may not be able to recover that volume. I'm wondering if you are having a disk detection issue with the new BIOS. I've heard about disk detection issues with SSDs on new Gigabyte boards, but not HDDs. I know that IRST sees the disks, but I have seen instances where the BIOS won't see a disk, but IRST does.

Clearing the metadata will likely destroy the RAID volume, unless it also rebuilds it.

Have you tried the Help option in the IRST GUI? It opens a new window with all the IRST documentation and troubleshooting info.

[taneric]

Re: Intel RST RAID5 "missing" after BIOS flash

@parsec,

Yes, the IRST Option ROM really shows "Disabled".

Anyway, I managed to "recover" the RAID5 Volume. What I did was to reset the Disabled drives to Non-RAID. Once I did that, the "Disabled" Volume disappears from the IRST ROM. I then proceeded to create a new RAID5 Volume that spans the same set of drives. Windows sees the new Volume.

However, the system has become less stable. Reboots for no apparent reason. I suspect the F7 BIOS with the IRST Option ROM still has some bugs within. I hope F8 with an updated IRST ROM comes out soon.