Samsung 950 Pro M.2 not recognised Z170 Extreme7+

parsec wrote: WARNING: If you clear the UEFI/CMOS or update the UEFI to a new/different version, both of which set all UEFI options to their defaults, the RAID 0 array will fail and cannot be recovered. That is not simply a case of booting the PC in AHCI mode, I wish it was. I learned this myself as every UEFI clear caused my RAID 0 volume of SM951s to fail. Other users confirmed this behavior. I highly suggest installing Win 10 on a SATA drive in RAID mode, and then experiment with RAID 0 and your 950s. I would never suggest creating your first PCIe SSD RAID 0 volume for a Windows installation.

Hi again parsec,

For your information (and maybe others!) I thought that my experience might be out of interest.
I've just been doing some tests with the following config:
* ASRock Extreme 7+ (Firmware 2.10)
* Intel Core i7 6700K
* RAID 1: 2 x 512 Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe
* RAID 1: 2 x 1To Samsung 850 Evo SATA3

Inside the UEFI:
Disabled CSM under Boot menu
Set the SATA mode to be RAID
UEFI only, and enabled Rest
Built my 2 Raid1 with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology that appeared after an F10 (save and exist)
Override the Boot Option to be the DVD in UEFI mode
Reboot

Once in the disk selection menu within windows 10 installation, I converted my 2 RAID 1 arrays into GPT disks.
(At this stage just one thing was a bit weird: when listing the disks under the diskpart tool in order to convert them, both 850 Evo were selectable but only one 950 Pro was visible. I would guess this is due to the technology difference but that would be nice to know more about this just out of curiosity)
I installed windows on the M.2 NVMe raid1.

So far so good, as expected, windows was booting up quite fast :-)

From there I wanted to test 2 things:
1) Can the system recover from a CMOS clear/firmware update?
2) Is UltraFast Boot mode that quick? And Is it relly not possible to access UEFI again without clearing the CMOS?

Results:

1) So I turned on UltraFast boot mode, and indeed boot time is quite impressive!

2) Indeed once this option is turned on you cannot access UEFI anymore...! :-p
So I cleared the CMOS and I was able to test my first question.
To start with, of course UEFI has loaded default settings. I had to disable CSM again, turn on UEFI mode, etc... basically I had to reconfigure the BIOS.

First good news, once I had access to the Intel Rapid Storage utilities, I could see that both my RAID 1 arrays were still there.

Second good news, I could still boot on my previous installation of windows without any further work.

My conclusion: in RAID 1, it seems to be a lot safer to issues, UEFI updates, etc...

I now feel good with my setup unless you have other concerns I should be aware of







Edited by PI2R - 27 Dec 2015 at 8:01am

@Parsec.

Sorry, I assumed you meant  that  support wasn't added until 14.6,  and it's not the option ROM, when you run pure UEFI  the firmware drops the ( CSMcore  Option Rom ) and it uses the EFI Sata driver in the UEFI.  Now it's called the RAID Driver, and is listed in UEFI as RAID Driver and not Sata Driver any longer. 

I also didn't mean you couldn't add the driver, I just meant that if the 14.5 didn't have PCIe support, adding the 14.6 or any windows based RST driver would be mute.  

We - meaning,  I have the ASrock extreme 7+  and have checked the new RAID Driver and the added NVMe support inside the UEFI. 

Been busy so I missed you.    


 

Prizm wrote: gussboy wrote: Should I need any "F6" additional driver if I only intend to run a Samsung 950 Pro in non-raid mode?  Can someone please clarify this? I also have the Z170 Gaming ITX/ac, and am currently waiting for stock of the 950 Pro.

You'll be fine, I installed Win 10 last night on my 950 Pro in AHCI mode, without an F6 driver, and it worked perfectly. Using that PC now to write this post.

I would suggest letting Windows format the 950. You also must configure the CSM option.

With CSM Enabled, set the sub-option "Launch UEFI Storage OpROM Policy" to UEFI only. Or if your video source is GOP compatible (Intel graphics is GOP compatible, most newer video cards are too) you can set CSM to Disabled, which enables UEFI for all the sub-options.

This is my first non-RAID Windows installation in years!

Hey Parsec, miss you.

The 14.0 series adds the PCIE / NMVe RAID support, not the 14.6, we have the 14.5 EFI RAID driver in the UEFI,  if it was 14.6 we couldn't add a RST RAID driver.

The 14.0 release notes.  I know you like to be informed so it's why I'm posting it.

14.0

-Support for PCIe NVMe storage devices
- Support for up to 3 PCIe storage devices
-Support for RAID0/1/5 volumes with PCIe storage devices
-Support for RTD3 on RAID volumes
-NVMe1.2 compliance
-NVMe Security Send and Security Receive (no boot support)
-NVMe Autonomous Power State Transitions




Edited by odiebugs - 07 Nov 2015 at 6:01am

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