help needed for configuring Prime H370 Plus for NVMe RAID

[tgw]

I need help for configuring my system please, I have been running in circles.

 

Situation:
I have a ASUS PRIME H370 Plus motherboard (i7-8700k) with a connected SATA SSD and Windows 10 Pro installed.
Settings in BIOS are:
- PCH Storage setting SATA controller enabled
- PCH Storage setting SATA mode AHCI
- SATA SSD on SATA port #3
Boots with CSM disabled, Intel RST was running in Windows.

 

What I want to do:
- install 2x NVMe SSD Samsung mzvlq512hblu-000h1 (they are blank, unformatted)
- mount as RAID 1
- transfer (clone) Windows 10 onto RAID volume
- set RAID volume as boot disk

 

Trying to do that, I have been running into trouble:
- after I installed the 2 NVMe on the motherboard, the computer booted, but RST stopped working. I reinstalled RST with the latest version, but then it refuses to start, claiming "unsupported platform".
- at that point, I could see both NVMe in BIOS listed under "NVMe device configuration"
- I activated Intel RAID optane in PCH storage settings, PCH Storage setting SATA mode Intel RST RAID premium optane, PCH Storage setting M2_1 controlled by RST, PCH Storage setting M2_2 controlled by RST
- boot from m2 appeared in boot options, but I still chose to boot from the existing boot disk
- with these settings, the PC bluescreened
- Secure boot setting had always been on "other OS", I activated CSM and then was able to boot normally as before
- in Windows storage manager, both NVMe disks are recognized, visible and formattable
- Intel RST still doesn't work
- Going back into the BIOS, I thought I would now try to make a RAID 1 volume.
- In the RAID configuration, only ONE NVMe disk is available for RAID, so I could not make a RAID volume
- Under "NVMe device configuration" it now says "No NVMe devices found"

 

Can someone please help me or point me to some documentation detailing the steps I need to take?
I imagine I'm not the only one who tried to do that.

[Gottfrid]

 

ASUS RAID Setup: A Complete Guide - Tech News Today

trouble configuring Prime H370 Plus for NVMe RAID - Republic of Gamers Forum - 1047272 (asus.com)

https://vtechinsider.com/how-to-setup-raid-asus-motherboard/#:~:text=How To Setup Raid Asus Motherboard.

I don´t know, but hopefully 1 of the above might help you find whats wrong.

[howto]

For the life of me I don't understand why you would want to do this.  

It does not make sense.  

What do you hope to gain?  

(50 years of hard core IT including Resilient, Fault Tolerant servers.)

[tgw]

9 hours ago, howto said:

For the life of me I don't understand why you would want to do this.  

It does not make sense.  

What do you hope to gain?  

(50 years of hard core IT including Resilient, Fault Tolerant servers.)

 

hmm.

maybe you can explain why it's a bad idea?

this box should become a high availability system.

 

RAID 1 has served me very well in the past against disk failure (the data backup is on other devices).

I admit my knowledge about UEFI / NVMe / Windows Secure Boot is limited, I would like to keep things as simple as possible regarding the NVMe RAID disks, ideally they should be readable on another system too.

Edited October 6 by tgw

[tgw]

update: I'm on track to solving the problem(s)

 

the bluescreens were caused by faulty sata cables. I looked into the connectors and they seemed corroded, so I swapped them out and no more bluescreens.

 

after that, I played around with some BIOS settings and finally I got Intel RST to work.

 

in Intel RST, I noticed one of the NVMe disks had "status: unknown and usage: unknown", while the other had "status: normal and usage: available".

 

so I swapped these drives out for another pair, and all worked as expected, I could create my RAID 1 volume in BIOS and it shows up properly in Intel RST and windows.

 

So all I have to do now is clone the system disk onto the RAID volume and set it as boot disk in the BIOS.

Edited October 6 by tgw

[tgw]

last update on this

I performed the last step and cloned Windows onto the new RAID 1 volume, everything is working well.