Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
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Intel RST (Windows application) not offering to preserve data when building RAID1

RFoth
Beginner
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Hi everyone,

I'm trying to build a RAID1 array using the Z68 Express chipset in my Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard. I've installed the RST windows application and would like to use it to mirror the data on an existing drive. It's not the drive Windows is installed on.

When I get to the step where you select the disks for the array, the program does not display the option to keep the existing data for the drive I want to mirror.

If I select other drives -- such as the Windows install (system) drive -- RST does offer to keep data. Only the drive I actually want to mirror is affected.

Does anyone know what might be going wrong and how I would make it work?

I've attached screenshots to show what I mean. I want to build the RAID1 array out of the two 1.8TB drives; one of them already has data on it that I want to mirror.

Thanks!

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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Please follow the steps in the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology user guide, page 30.

http://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/irst_user_guide.pdf http://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/irst_user_guide.pdf

If issue persists kindly indicate if the drives have any other partition and the version of Intel® Rapid Storage Technology used.

RFoth
Beginner
1,686 Views

Hi Joe, thanks for the reply!

I have followed the steps from the iRST guide (Section "8.2 RAID-Ready to 2-drive RAID 1") and the problem still exists. The screenshots attached above show what happens at step 5 of that guide.

The disk that I want to mirror is formatted with a single NTFS partition. It uses the GPT partitioning scheme.

The second disk is unformatted.

My other formatted disks (including the system disk) are MBR. I don't remember specifying the partitioning schemes so I don't know why they are different.

My RST version is 13.2.4.1000.

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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Try shrinking the partition on the drive that contains the data and leave some space as unallocated. It could be 100 MB or 200 MB.

Then try again.

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RFoth
Beginner
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I tried shrinking the partition by 200MB, then by 1GB just to be sure. Unfortunately RST still isn't offering to keep the data (not even after a reboot).

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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Please provide the system report from Intel® Rapid Storage Technology and a screenshot of the drives in Disk Management.

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-023487.htm Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — System Reports

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RFoth
Beginner
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Hi Joe,

I've attached both files.

The drives I want to RAID are labelled Drive 1 and Drive 2 in Disk Management (the 1.8TB drives).

Thanks for your patience on this!

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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Please uninstall the current version of Intel® Rapid Storage Technology you have and install the latest version supported for your Intel® 6 Series Chipset, which is https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=23496 12.9.0.1001. Let me know about the outcome.

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RFoth
Beginner
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I have downgraded RST to 12.9.0.1001 and I still cannot mirror my drive but the behaviour is is slightly different now.

  • If I select the drive a I want to mirror the question "do you want to keep data from one of the selected disks?" appears but without the radio buttons required to answer the question.
  • If I select the unallocated drive no option to keep data appears (as expected).
  • If I select a third, formated, drive the option to keep data appears with the required radio buttons (as expected).

I have attached screenshots illustrating the three states.

By the way, I followed the link from this http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/sftwr-prod/imsm?wapkw=rst RST support page to this http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-020644.htm compatibility sheet to determine chipset compatibility for RST, but it is somewhat old and doesn't have a version-to-version compatibility matrix. Is there some way to look up the latest version of RST for a specific chipset (or family)?

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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The compatibility is listed in the ReadMe file provided for each version of Intel® Rapid Storage Technology.

It is the first time I see this behavior. Did you remove the version 13.2.4.1000 before installing 12.9?

You may also check with the motherboard manufacturer regarding possible RAID option ROM updates in new BIOS versions.

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RFoth
Beginner
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It is a funny problem!

Before installing 12.9, I uninstalled version 13.2 of the RST software using Windows Add/Remove programs. The uninstaller warned me that the drivers would not be removed if they were currently in use. When I installed version 12.9 of RST there was a warning that newer drivers were already installed but I selected the option to replace the version 13.2 drivers with the older 12.9 drivers. I used Device Manager to verify that the version 12.9 drivers were installed correctly (see attached screenshot).

My motherboard manufacturer (Gigabyte) offers a download of version 12.8.0.1016 of Intel RST for my board. I tried downgrading to their version using the same method outlined in the above paragraph but it did not fix the problem so I have upgraded back to 12.9 again.

Gigabyte also offers one newer version of the Award BIOS than I am currently using but the changelog only lists improved USB3.0 support -- nothing about the RAID ROM. There is also a newer UEFI BIOS but I have had problems with it in the past. Here is the http://www.gigabyte.com.au/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3853# ov product page for my board.

It is odd that RST seems to work fine for my 150GB SSD and for my ancient 150GB HDD but not for the 1.8TB drive. The main differences I've noticed are:

  1. The 1.8TB drive is GPT partitioned whereas the others are MBR
  2. The 1.8 TB drive is being used by Windows for the pagefile

I have searched online and it doesn't seem like these differences should matter but maybe you know about something I couldn't find?

My 1.8TB harddrive seems to be operating perfectly fine. I have been using it this whole time and not had any errors. Just in case, I tried running SeaTools to check the drive for errors but apparently SeaTools only runs in IDE mode (or, in any case, it crashes iaStora.sys with a DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error when I try to run it).

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Jose_H_Intel1
Employee
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Did you restart the system after the uninstall process and before installing v12.9?

I wonder if it helps connecting the drive with the data you want to keep to the SATA port 0.

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SJian8
Beginner
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I solved an identical problem by converting the disk type from GPT to MBR.

I am using Intel RST 14.8.0.1042 on Windows 10 but it is possible that the firmware of my motherboard does not support GPT disks. Converting the disk to MBR solved the problem for me. I was able to create the RAID1 array without losing the data. Nothing else worked.

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Anonymous
Not applicable
1,687 Views

Hi sorinj,

Thank you for your feedback.

Mike C

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