X399 Taichi & RAID & Win10 Install

JayB33, a few comments about your goal and situation, you may know all of this already:

You must have at least Windows 10 build 1703 or any RS2 build.

If you single SSD does not have Windows 10 installed with the NVMe RAID mode (not SATA RAID mode) enabled you may have difficulty getting the Windows installation to recognize it needs those three drivers. You'll be creating a Device Manager Storage controllers entry for a device (AMD NVMe RAID controller) that does not (yet) exist. I you can get the driver-less entry in Device Manager as discussed above, great, IMO it will be essential. Windows has all kinds of drivers available for use during an installation, but if the corresponding device does not exist, they will not be used.

You plan on creating the RAID array with the utility in the UEFI/BIOS? That may be your only choice.

Your single 960 Pro Windows installation should be UEFI booting, which is essential for AMD NVMe RAID. That Windows installation should have four partitions on it, which won't all be shown in Disk Management. If you use the diskpart command in a PowerShell window, and list the partitions on that SSD, you should have these partitions:

Recovery 450MB
System  100MB (EFI System Partition)
Reserved  16MB (Windows "protective" MBR partition)
Primary X GB (Primary Partition)

It looks like you have all these partitions on the Windows 10 installation, and it is GPT partitioned. The size of the Recovery partition does not need to be identical to mine, that size is from my Windows 10 installation on a 960 EVO. You must clone all of those partitions to the RAID array.

I hope this works for you. If Macrium can detect the AMD NVMe RAID 0 array, that is one major hurdle behind you. Also, an apparently successful clone can fail to boot, so just be prepared for that. You may want to check the boot order the first time the RAID 0 clone boots, and be sure you know which entry is for the single 960 Pro, they should be identified with the drive name after "Windows Boot Manager".

JayB33, I really do NOT know what you are trying to do!  You need to tell me in detail - keeping me in the dark is not aiding your cause.  Are you trying to build a SATA RAID, or NVMe or both?  If NVMe only, then do not set SATA to RAID, only NVMe RAID to Enabled.  If you are building a SATA RAID or both, I suspect, but am not sure, you will need to set each of your ordinary SATA drives to a RAID Volume array.  Whether you will need to delete the SATA HDD first or not and whether RX2 will format it or not I do not know.  This situation is covered in no instructions that I am aware of, so you must ask AMD and/or ASRock.  Please let me hear.  Good luck and enjoy, John.

EDIT:  Here are the instructions I posted in another thread.  I am running a NVMe 3 SSD RAID0 with W10 plus two old HDDs backup - all fine.  I followed exactly the second set of instructions below.

For SATA array.
1. Boot into BIOS, hit F9 then F10
2. Boot into BIOS, set SATA mode to RAID
3. Set CSM to disable
4. F10
5. boot into BIOS
6. use RAIDXpert2 (RX2) to delete all drives you want included in the RAID and any
    arrays not needed
7. Create array, selecting each of your drives, one by one
8. F10
9. Boot into Boot Menu (F11)
10. Select install USB.  You should see UEFI only version.
11. Install the RAID drivers in this order:
   1-rcbottom - all your drives in the RAID will disappear
   2-rcraid - you will see your one RAID
   3-rccfg - you are good to go!
12. Install W10 on the RAID.
13. Enjoy.

If you are creating an NVMe RAID:

1. Boot into BIOS, hit F9 then F10
2. Boot into BIOS, in PBS set NVMe RAID to Enabled
3. Set CSM to disable
4. F10
5. boot into BIOS
6. use RX2 to delete all drives you want included in the RAID and any
    arrays not needed
7. Create array, selecting each of your drives, one by one
8. F10
9. Boot into Boot Menu (F11)
10. Select install USB.  You should see UEFI only version.
11. Install the RAID drivers in this order:
   1-rcbottom - all your drives in the RAID will disappear
   2-rcraid - you will see your one RAID
   3-rccfg - you are good to go!
12. Install W10 on the RAID.
13. Enjoy.


Edited by MisterJ - 31 Dec 2017 at 3:04am

If I know one thing it's this - GPT and MBR are partitioning schemes. They have little to do with the underlying physical protocols like SATA, NVMe, etc.

If you're seeing your drives in Device Manager and in Disk Management, then it doesn't really matter how exactly your HDDs are partitioned. From Disk Management you can always re-partition them to your liking.

I see. What do you see in Disk Management? Start it by right-clicking Win icon, then click on it once it appears in the menu.

I'm also sure that if your SATA HDDs contains data, you can't simply put them in RAID and retain that data. When creating a new RAID array all disks will be wiped first.

I've seen you put tons of $$$ in your build and it really hurts me when I see you struggle. I don't have enough experience with soft RAID, though. Maybe if you could get me the same build as yours, I'd be able to troubleshoot first-hand!

JayB33, I responded very clearly.  Set SATA mode to AHCI and leave it!  You do not need it if you are building a NVMe array.  Please read my instructions above for building an NVMe RAID.  DO NOT worry about your SATA HDDs being MBR/GPT.  One of mine is MBR and one is GPT.  I would like they all be GPT but do not want to save/restore the data.  Pay no attention to RAID information concerning any boards but X399!  It is quite different.  Enjoy, John.