How to create Samsung 950 Pro RAID 0, Z170 OC F?

It sounds like you've done most everything right. The problem may be related to Windows 7, and the problem it has using the EFI boot loader. More on that in a bit.

It sounds like you installed Win 7 on the Z170 OCF in RAID mode, correct?

When you installed Win 7, did you configure the CSM option at all? Was it done as a UEFI booting installation?

 If CSM was Enabled and the sub-options were all left on Legacy Only, the default value, then you did a Legacy Windows installation, not a UEFI or UEFI Booting Windows installation. Is your OS drive formatted as MBR or GPT?

I'm really just going over this, since you did not mention installing Windows in UEFI mode. Plus Win 7 cannot be installed in UEFI mode without a modification to the location of the EFI boot loader file. You might have done this but I assumed you would have mentioned that in your first post, which was otherwise very comprehensive in detail, thanks for that.

If you did not have the CSM option configured as you described, when you installed Windows 7 (which I assume you didn't), then changing it now may not have any affect.

One of the endless (and seemingly undocumented, or hard to find) details about PCIe SSDs is whether or not they can be used in IRST RAID without the EFI boot loader being used, even when they are NOT used as the OS volume/drive, as you are trying to do. In other words, can they be used in RAID in a Legacy booting configuration.

I've left Win 7 behind because due to its problem with UEFI booting. I also don't have enough 950 Pros and adapter cards to experiment with using them in RAID on my Z170 board.


I use an ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ board, which is similar enough to yours for everything to be identical using RAID and NVMe SSDs.

I've never created a RAID array with 950 Pros in the PCIe slots with adapter cards, or with Windows 7.

I have created RAID 0 arrays with two 950 Pros in the M.2 slots, using Windows 10, and installing Windows 10 on the RAID 0 array. I created the RAID arrays using the IRST utility in the UEFI.

Some information for you related to things you said or asked about in your post:

The NVMe Configuration screen in the UEFI, Advanced screen, only lists the NVMe drives. There are no configuration options for NVMe drives at this time.

The IRST PCIe Remapping options in the Storage Configuration screen only apply to the the M.2 slots, which you are not using. I would be REALLY be interested to see if you put the 950's in the M2_1 and M2_2 slots, if that made any difference. Personally, that is what I would at least try to see if Win 7/Legacy booting is the problem.

I recently saw a benchmark of a "software RAID" (Windows RAID) of two Intel 750 NVMe SSDs in a review, which was excellent. That should be an option for you if you cannot get the IRST RAID working.

I'm still thinking about your situation (while installing Win 10 on an Intel 750 on an old Z77 board), and if I come up with anything I'll let you know.

Please post again with any progress (or not), since I am interested in the outcome.

I have confirmed that RAID 0 is possible using the Ultra M.2 slots (1 & 2)  with Windows 7 and CSM enabled, OpRom UEFI.
The NVMEs show up on the UEFI IRST RAID management page, before Windows even boots, so it doesn't seem that the Windows version is the primary problem.

It seems to be a matter of how the PCIe system has been designed (and/or UEFI and IRST). Another possibility, I guess, is the adapters, but they don't keep Windows device manager and disk management from being able to see the NVMEs.

Over the past few days I have confirmed that there are at least two possible ways to get RAID or RAID-like setups with the ASRock Z170 OCF.

(1) Place both NVMe's in Ultra M.2 slots. (I used slot 1 & slot 2)
They will then show up on the UEFI Advanced\Storage Configuration options page in the Intel Rapid Storage section, and from there you can create the Intel RAID array.
(Alternatively, if you have set the OpRom storage policy to Legacy, you can access the Intel RST RAID management page by typing Control-I before Windows loads.)

One of the disadvantages of this method is that it requires giving up being able to use several Intel SATA ports from off the Z170 chipset. (In the case of using Ultra M.2 slots 1 & 2, you would be disabling SATA3_0, SATA3_1, SATA3_2, and SATA3_3, as well as SATA_EXP0 and SATA_EXP1. That would leave you with the Intel SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 ports from the chipset, plus you would still have 4 SATA3 ports from the separate ASMedia chips.)

(2) Place the NVMe's via adapters into PCIe slots. (I am using PCIE4 & PCIE6, but also confirmed other PCIe slots can be used.)
The NVMe's will NOT show up in the UEFI Advanced\Storage Configuration Intel Rapid Storage section (in fact, I don't see any Intel Rapid Storage Section in this case). They will show up in the UEFI Advanced\Storage Configuration page under the NVMe section, but you won't be able to change any settings on that page--you can only see them listed there.

With the NVMe's attached via adapters into PCIe slots, you can then create RAID-like arrays once you log into Windows. (Specifically, striped dynamic volumes created via disk management for RAID 0.)

(3) It is NOT possible to create Intel rapid storage RAID arrays in the UEFI or pre-Windows-load environment with the NVMe's attached to PCIe slots via adapters.


Here's what ASRock Technical Support wrote in an email:

The RAID configuration with PCIe slot cannot be supported. It can be only created by software RAID. However, we haven't tested with M.2 to PCIE adapter on PCIE slot with software RAID configuration. It possible software RADI but not 100% guaranteed able to configure software RAID.

I also tried asking if it was possible, in an Intel support community post. The Intel representative replied that the NVMe's shouldn't work at all if there is a problem with the IRST. So they seemed to be pointing the finger back at ASRock's implementation.

If you only use 2x m.2 in RAID0 you should still have two Intel SATA ports available to RAID your HDDs. If you're only using one SSD and one HDD then you're good to go. 

I see from your previous post that you can see the m.2s on the adapters in windows,...good. create an OS RAID array in windows and forget about IRST,....they will be just as fast.

Edited by clubfoot - 04 May 2016 at 9:33am