Intel Chipset Raid - Why Bother

[CKels]

I am wondering why Intel even bothers to put RAID on the chipset. They seem incapable of releasing stable drivers.

I have a MSI Eclipse board and an EVGA X58 board. Both have 12 GB of Coursair memory, 920 processer, Windows 7 Ultimate X64, etc.

The MSI board is totally unstable with raid enabled (6 1 TB WD drives) Raid 5 with 4 drives resulted in continual drive failures being reported. I went back to Raid 1 - three sets of raid. I then experienced system freezes (everything stops for a minute or two) to total lockup. I totally broke the raid and reset the drives back to IDE - performance has returned and the lockups and freezes have gone.

The EVGA board has been much more stable, however, I get freezes with raid 5 and to a lessor amount with a reformat and setting up the drives as Raid 1.

I had in the past went back to the 8.6.2.1012 version of the drivers that seemed more stable. In the most recent reformat and reinstall of the os I put in the very latest version of the driver available from Intel - which continues the trend of instability.

Intel, why do you even bother if you cannot support the product that you designed by providing stable drivers. We pay a premium for these boards and expect them to work with the features that are included including your crappy RAID support. Please fix your drivers so that your components are usable.

[idata]

Intel, why do you even bother if you cannot support the product that you designed by providing stable drivers. We pay a premium for these boards and expect them to work with the features that are included including your crappy RAID support. Please fix your drivers so that your components are usable.

If Intel RAID drivers as in RST 10.1.0.1008 are so unstable then why is it that I can run two RAID 5 arrays each with three drives in and stable?

There is more to having a stable RAID then the drivers used to run them.

[CKels]

Which motherboard are you using? I get stability with my EVGA X58 and my MSI EClipse board using driver version 8.6.2.1012. Issues with the disk being marked bad, lockups and freezes occur with later drivers - more so on the MSI board than the EVGA board.

[idata]

Which motherboard are you using?

GIGABYTE - GA-P55-UD4 should you really need to know.

[CKels]

I am sorry I bothered you with the question. I am interested in determining if perhaps the issue is implementation by the motherboard vendors that is contributing to the issue.

I am not alone with issues regarding the Intel Raid - there are lots of threads about issues with the drivers / chipset. I am glad it is working for you.

[idata]

I am sorry I bothered you with the question. I am interested in determining if perhaps the issue is implementation by the motherboard vendors that is contributing to the issue.

It can but unlikely as Intel provides the RAID option ROM part that must be put in with the rest of the BIOS but having BIOS correctly access it right even after the RAID drivers take over is down to testing. There is a big number of setup types and drives to do that they likely do some and thats it and for how long for? Getting it right with testing and time is a lot of work and then its finding why it happened in the first place.

I am not alone with issues regarding the Intel Raid - there are lots of threads about issues with the drivers / chipset. I am glad it is working for you.

If you ask the motherboard vendor what tests were done for RAID and then tell them to setup a RAID on such ports maybe not with the same drives to see if they get the same problems at their end.

The only problem I had with Intel RAID drivers was with Matrix Storage Manager 8.9.

List of things if not down to Intel drivers or your motherboards BIOS.

Faulty cables both power and data

Faulty PSU

Faulty motherboard either chip or connection link

Overheating

Faulty HDD or SSD

Overclocking

HDD's not suited for RAID

Having HDD's power down in idle mode failing to spin up in time.

[CKels]

Thanks Peter.