X570 Three M.2 with one in AHCI and two in RAID 1?

[JAB Creations]

I got screwed by ASRock who thought it'd be cute to knowingly send out a motherboard that would not post for a full minute; $330 new and this is the kind of treatment the industry (Asus, socket 939 SLI 16, also $300+, also new) thinks it's acceptable to treat us.

I currently run three RAID 1s and finally upgrading my eight year old rig (entrepreneur so unfortunately food usually comes first, usually). My plan was originally to go 8 SATA and 3 M.2 however it did not cross my mind that my 8 SATA 990FX motherboard has two SATA controllers (three if you count the external SATA ports). All SATA on a single controller are either AHCI or RAID, you don't get to pick.

So the question I now have is if all three M.2 slots on X570 motherboards that have them: are all three on the same controller or will I be able to have a single one in AHCI mode to boot Windows and the other two in RAID 1?

Additionally if there are three M.2 slots and if they are all in RAID mode (and RAID 5 is not listed) is the third port just for a hot redundant drive?

Current setup (all SATA):
C:\ Single 1TB SSD
D:\ RAID 1 1TB SSD
E:\ RAID 1 4TB Mech
F:\ RAID 1 4TB Mech
G:\ Optical

Desired (money is still a thing) Setup:
C:\ Single M.2 2TB NVMe
D:\ RAID 1 M.2 2TB NVMe
E:\ 12TB RAID 1 Mech
F:\ Optical

Money is not a thing setup:
C:\ RAID 1 2TB NVMe
D:\ 16TB RAID 1/5 SSD/NVMe

 

[newtekie1]

So the question I now have is if all three M.2 slots on X570 motherboards that have them: are all three on the same controller or will I be able to have a single one in AHCI mode to boot Windows and the other two in RAID 1?

Just because a controller is in RAID mode doesn't mean all the drives have to be in a RAID array. Any drives connected to the controller that you don't put in an array will just show up in Windows as single drives.

Also, at least on my X470 board, the SATA and M.2 ports need to both be in RAID mode for all the drives to show up in Windows. As far as I can tell this is a driver limitation from AMD. My X470 motherboard has two SATA SSDs in RAID1(for the OS) and one M.2 SSD by itself that I use for data. When I first installed Windows, it only detected the M.2 drive. When I loaded the AMD RAID driver, Windows than detected the SATA RAID1 array, but did not detect the M.2 drive anymore. After Windows was installed, the M.2 was still not detected. Then I found in the BIOS where to switch the M.2 controller to RAID and the single M.2 drive then showed up in Windows. I never could find a way to load the ACHI driver and RAID AMD driver, I could only get one or the other loaded. So you will have to put everything in RAID mode. But you don't have to add every drive connected to RAID arrays. Drives not in RAID arrays will just show up as single normal drives. They are still functioning through RAID mode, but work just fine as single drives.

 

[JAB Creations]

Just because a controller is in RAID mode doesn't mean all the drives have to be in a RAID array. Any drives connected to the controller that you don't put in an array will just show up in Windows as single drives.

If so then this thread might be more appropriate for the Storage forums, hm...

 

[oxrufiioxo]

If so then this thread might be more appropriate for the Storage forums, hm...

I think you can do raid 1 on the 2 slots connected to the PCH but I could be wrong. You can't do raid on the M.2 connected directly to the CPU as far as I know at least on X570. Using all 3 will either disable 2 sata ports or the bottom pcie slot on motherboards with 8 sata ports.

Hopefully someone with a similar setup chimes in though.

 

[newtekie1]

I think you can do raid 1 on the 2 slots connected to the PCH but I could be wrong. You can't do raid on the M.2 connected directly to the CPU as far as I know at least on X570. Using all 3 will either disable 2 sata ports or the bottom pcie slot on motherboards with 8 sata ports.

Hopefully someone with a similar setup chimes in though.

Also, depending on the motherboard and thanks to the limited PCI lanes on X570, using all the M.2 slots will make some of the M.2 slots run at x2 mode instead of x4. Each manufacture handles the lane splitting differently, some even do it differently from model to model of board.

 

[JAB Creations]

I think you can do raid 1 on the 2 slots connected to the PCH but I could be wrong. You can't do raid on the M.2 connected directly to the CPU as far as I know at least on X570. Using all 3 will either disable 2 sata ports or the bottom pcie slot on motherboards with 8 sata ports.

Hopefully someone with a similar setup chimes in though.

I am have been watching pretty much everything AMD related on YouTube and I vaguely am aware that the top M.2 slot is directly connected to the CPU instead of the chipset (however that works). So 6 SATA and three M.2? Hm...

Also, depending on the motherboard and thanks to the limited PCI lanes on X570, using all the M.2 slots will make some of the M.2 slots run at x2 mode instead of x4. Each manufacture handles the lane splitting differently, some even do it differently from model to model of board.

That I'm cool with. My first experience with an NVMe drive was for a client build about two years ago and the rig didn't boot any faster. I'm, at least not yet, working with anything where drive speed access is critical. That being said with PCI-Express 4.0 2x lanes are effectively PCI-Express 3.0 4x - not sure if that much bandwidth was already being saturated? Still not a big deal and I likely won't be working with a Threadripper rig until the 5000 series.

 

[newtekie1]

That I'm cool with. My first experience with an NVMe drive was for a client build about two years ago and the rig didn't boot any faster. I'm, at least not yet, working with anything where drive speed access is critical. That being said with PCI-Express 4.0 2x lanes are effectively PCI-Express 3.0 4x - not sure if that much bandwidth was already being saturated? Still not a big deal and I likely won't be working with a Threadripper rig until the 5000 series.

It's not, in fact there are PCI-E 3.0 drives that are faster than some of the PCI-E 4.0 drives. But the good thing about that is you can put a PCI-E 4.0 drive in a M.2 x2 slot, and not really worry about losing any performance. Like you said, you'll still be getting the bandwidth of PCI-E 3.0 x4, which is enough for the drive.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I am have been watching pretty much everything AMD related on YouTube and I vaguely am aware that the top M.2 slot is directly connected to the CPU instead of the chipset (however that works). So 6 SATA and three M.2? Hm...

The Taichi lets you keep all 8 sata ports but disables a pcie slot, ROG hero disables 2 sata ports for example. But as @newtekie1 Says you also have to be careful about how bandwidth is split with the bottom 2 slots According 2 my manual all 3 slots on the aorus master run at X4 but you are limited to 4 sata ports in that scenario.

 

[JAB Creations]

The Taichi lets you keep all 8 sata ports but disables a pcie slot, ROG hero disables 2 sata ports for example. But as @newtekie1 Says you also have to be careful about how bandwidth is split with the bottom 2 slots According 2 my manual all 3 slots on the aorus master run at X4 but you are limited to 4 sata ports in that scenario.

I'm interested in NVMe to reduce my current 10 SATA port reliance. I have a 5.25 front adapter that gives me 2 USB 3.0 ports, a 2.5 and a 3.5 inch bays so I can treat hard drives like floppies for cloning and the like. I can technically test running a single drive on a controller in RAID mode since I've got two of my RAID 1 drives in the newer case waiting for the replacement motherboard from Newegg and see if I can access it normally. I clone drives so my downtime is limited to about one hours versus about three days if I have to setup up Windows and all my software from scratch and I've always hated having extra stuff hanging around. I have a USB two-bay hard drive reader that I've used for clients but it's for clients, hence my front 5.25 bay adapter.

The main issue really is drive capacity. I do not want anything important on the physical OS drive hence why my My Documents is registry hacked on to the D:\. However SSDs aren't pushing 12TB+ (for anything around what I can currently afford nor reasonably afford for a while longer) otherwise I'd just have a C:\ and D:\ for hard drives.

• I'll have an internal optical drive likely for another decade and I'd rather not have a dedicated SATA controller addon card for it.
• If RAID will allow optical great though not in my experience with my 990FX.
• Windows apparently is very difficult to get to install and boot from a drive in RAID mode.
• I want at least two PCI-Express slots free (besides for the dedicated GPU of course) in case the LAN port or an audio jack dies though if I keep the replacement ASRock board it has two LAN ports.

I think I may just keep the ASRock replacement motherboard and test some of these things out. Eventually I'll likely have a dedicated gaming rig and a dedicated work rig.

 

[newtekie1]

hence why my My Documents is registry hacked on to the D:\

You don't have to use a registry hack to do this, the function is built right into Windows now. You can easily change the location of pretty much all the files under your profile now. Just right click, go to properties, and select the location tab. On my main computer I have Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos all on my D:\ Drive.

If RAID will allow optical great though not in my experience with my 990FX.

It should work in RAID. I've had plenty of optical drives connected with the SATA controllers in RAID mode. Though, I've ditched internal optical drives for a small USB drive that I connect to whatever computer I need it on. I don't really see the point in internal ones anymore, they're ugly grey boxes that stick out like a sore thumb inside a case and they waste a SATA port.

Windows apparently is very difficult to get to install and boot from a drive in RAID mode.

Nah, Windows 10 is pretty easy. Just download the "SATA Floppy Image" from driver section for your board on AsRock's website. Extract the whole folder to a USB flash drive(it can be on the same flash drive you are installing Windows 10 from). Then when it gets to the screen where you pick what drive you want Windows to install on, it probably won't have any drives listed because the RAID driver isn't installed. There is an option to load a driver, click on that and then browse to the flash drive and select the driver file. You don't have to pick a specific file, just browse to the folder with all the driver files in it, Windows will pick the right file. I think you might have to do this two or three times to get Windows to load all the drivers(I can't remember, it's been a while since I installed Windows on my AMD RAID). But just keep doing it until the RAID shows up as an option to install Windows onto.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I think you can do raid 1 on the 2 slots connected to the PCH but I could be wrong. You can't do raid on the M.2 connected directly to the CPU as far as I know at least on X570. Using all 3 will either disable 2 sata ports or the bottom pcie slot on motherboards with 8 sata ports.

Hopefully someone with a similar setup chimes in though.

That depends entirely on the board design. There are a lot of strange board layouts out there that are not following the "default" path laid out by AMD.
Here's a good example of some of the madness on the ASRoc X570 Aqua. Admittedly it only has two M.2 slots, but you could imagine the Thunderbolt chip being the third.

Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14951/the-asrock-x570-aqua-motherboard-review-

I'm interested in NVMe to reduce my current 10 SATA port reliance. I have a 5.25 front adapter that gives me 2 USB 3.0 ports, a 2.5 and a 3.5 inch bays so I can treat hard drives like floppies for cloning and the like. I can technically test running a single drive on a controller in RAID mode since I've got two of my RAID 1 drives in the newer case waiting for the replacement motherboard from Newegg and see if I can access it normally. I clone drives so my downtime is limited to about one hours versus about three days if I have to setup up Windows and all my software from scratch and I've always hated having extra stuff hanging around. I have a USB two-bay hard drive reader that I've used for clients but it's for clients, hence my front 5.25 bay adapter.

The main issue really is drive capacity. I do not want anything important on the physical OS drive hence why my My Documents is registry hacked on to the D:\. However SSDs aren't pushing 12TB+ (for anything around what I can currently afford nor reasonably afford for a while longer) otherwise I'd just have a C:\ and D:\ for hard drives.

• I'll have an internal optical drive likely for another decade and I'd rather not have a dedicated SATA controller addon card for it.
• If RAID will allow optical great though not in my experience with my 990FX.
• Windows apparently is very difficult to get to install and boot from a drive in RAID mode.
• I want at least two PCI-Express slots free (besides for the dedicated GPU of course) in case the LAN port or an audio jack dies though if I keep the replacement ASRock board it has two LAN ports.

I think I may just keep the ASRock replacement motherboard and test some of these things out. Eventually I'll likely have a dedicated gaming rig and a dedicated work rig.

One issue with your plan is that I'm not sure that you can do hot-swap/removable drive with RAID mode enabled. The reason for this is that you have a setting in the UEFI for allowing SATA drives to be removable, whereas the RAID settings is done in an external interface if you want to use the AMD RAID. However, you could simply use Windows RAID with the UEFI set to AHCI mode. There might be a small CPU performance hit doing it the latter way.
As for optical drives, they should work fine with RAID mode enabled.

You need to check the motherboard manual for the prospective board you're looking to buy, since as pointed out above, all boards have some quirks with regards to what works once you've plugged in three M.2 drives.