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X399-HD not showing in UEFI boot list in RAID mode

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DbRbt View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DbRbt Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Dec 2017 at 8:56am
Originally posted by MisterJ MisterJ wrote:

DbRbt, I have received my replacement board and I have not tried to create a RAID yet, but the same ghost drives and RAID0 are still there.  I really think there is something seriously wrong with the function design.  I opened a new AMD ticket today to try to get some help.  Have you seen this thread?  http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=6859&title=x399-fatality-1950x-raid-problems
Looks like msco has the same problem as I.  My NVMe drives (3X960) work great!  Do you continue to run W7 and your RAIDs are all SATA?  When I run RX2 and get "array 0 not allowed by current license level"  it means that the drivers are not installed (in Windows) or RAID is not enabled in the BIOS.  I do not know what the 2 means, but I think it is not really a license issue.  Please keep us up to date.  Thanks much and enjoy, John.

EDIT: I looked at the rumors on the Samsung 970 and 980 and they look no faster than my 960s.

MisterJ, apologies for the delayed response.

Originally posted by MisterJ MisterJ wrote:

...I have received my replacement board and I have not tried to create a RAID yet, but the same ghost drives and RAID0 are still there.  I really think there is something seriously wrong with the function design
 

I am glad you received your replacement board, but it is strange that it still shows ghost drives. I tried to see if I will encounter the same issue. Played with creating/changing/deleting RAID arrays (through UEFI) on my board, but all operations worked as expected.

I had been struggling with RAID drivers, and finally threw in the towel. The Windows version of RAIDXpert will not let me log in, and any RAID arrays I define in UEFI, show briefly in Windows, and then vanish, with a cryptic message about licensing, displayed by RaidXpert notification service in the taskbar. Drivers are installed in Windows, and UEFI is in RAID mode.

 I tried every available driver version, and RaidXpert version, to not avail. Reading the thread you pointed out, apparently it is not just Win7 that is having problems with RAID drivers, as I thought. I wonder if there any way to collectively draw AMDs attention to this problem.

  I gave up on AMDs RAID, and switched to mirrored dynamic volumes in windows. Not ideal, but at least they work.

 I am disappointed in AMD -- both their programmers and their support. It has been 9 days since I raised a ticket with AMD support, and not a peep out of them, except a message that my inquiry was sent to advanced support. That was 6 days ago.  I hope they have been more responsive to your ticket.

 

Originally posted by MisterJ MisterJ wrote:

My NVMe drives (3X960) work great!  Do you continue to run W7 and your RAIDs are all SATA?

Glad that your NVMe?™s are working well. Are you running them individually, or have you managed to build a RAID with them? I was planning to get a 960 or 970 (for my boot drive), but held off for 2 reasons: wanted to first try out the Taichi with SATA drives, before trying more exotic hardware (ha! thought SATA would be more straightforward, little did I know I would waste 3 weeks trying  to get basic RAID going), and also,  am waiting for more reasonable prices (they are hovering around $450 for the 1TB, and there have been no decent sales on them since September. I expected that with 970/980 release rumored for  beginning of 2018, they would be actively reducing stock of 960.. but noooo).

 

Thanks, and good luck
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DbRbt Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Dec 2017 at 8:59am
Originally posted by parsec parsec wrote:



The reason the Windows 7 installation, when installed in X399's RAID/UEFI mode, failed to boot is relatively simple if not at all obvious.

While Windows 7 can be UEFI booting compatible, the Windows 7 installation file structure has a mistake in the location of the EFI boot loader file, or the hard coded path to that file is incorrect. That EFI boot loader file is what is used for UEFI booting, and without it a UEFI Windows installation cannot boot. The error message you quoted actually applies to the situation, the necessary file (EFI boot loader) cannot be found.

A decent explanation of this and instructions for fixing the Windows 7 installation ISO file layout for UEFI booting can be found in the guide below. While this guide is about Windows 8 and 8.1, the information it contains about Windows 7 is valid and only applies to Windows 7. Scroll down to step 11 in the Option 2 section for the details:

https://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html

The fix is a little tricky, and I've had both successes and failures creating the fixed Windows 7 installation media. Note that if you get Windows 7 installed and booting in UEFI mode, the question of whether or not the AMD X399 RAID drivers and RAID software will work with Windows 7 remains to be determined.

This also explains why your Windows 7 AHCI/Legacy MBR mode installation worked fine. That type of installation does not use the EFI boot loader, so works fine with the standard Windows 7 installation media. RAID for X399 is callled "UEFI RAID" in the AMD manual, and UEFI booting seems to be required both for SATA and NVMe OS volumes.

There might be a way via a BCD edit to get Windows 7 to use the EFI boot loader in its default location, if you could run it in a pre-boot environment. That would be after an X399 RAID/UEFI mode Windows 7 installation, with the OS volume somehow partitioned in GPT. Again, the RAID driver and software compatibility might make all the work a waste of time.

 

Parsec, thank you for the detailed response, and analysis.

Yes, after many hours learning about how UEFI works, I came to the same conclusion that win7 messes up the linkage from the boot loader to the windows loader.

 The article you pointed out is superb. Thank you. I found a much more rudimentary discussion about efi file locations (step 11 you highlight in the article), and tried adjusting the locations of all the files mentioned, but it did not help. I think the path, referring to the partition location was incorrect in my case. I was planning to fix it manually using BCDEdit, but then found a tool (Easy Recovery Essentials) which fixed it automatically. Spared me the tedious command-line editing using BCEdit.

 I gave up on AMD?™s RAID. It does not work, and looking through the threads here, it seems the problems are not confined to just Win7.  I am very  disappointed in AMD -- both their programmers and their support. It has been 9 days since I raised a ticket with AMD support, and not a peep out of them, except a message that my inquiry was sent to advanced support. That was 6 days ago.

 

 

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MisterJ View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote MisterJ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Dec 2017 at 12:35am
DbRbt, I still have not given up on AMD UEFI RAID and truly believe I will slay this dragon.  I hope you will not surrender either.  AMD support basically told me the same thing - assigned an Expert, but I have heard nothing.  I have successfully deleted all my ghost and created a NVMe array.  The trick to deleting my ghosts was to delete the RAID0 (which still hung around) AND delete all the NVMe SSDs comprising the array.  I then got a message saying something like "...no arrays exist...".  I then created a RAID0 of all three of my NVMe SSDs.  I made a USB stick using the MS Media Creation Tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
I booted the USB, install the ASRock RAID drivers that I had copied to the USB stick.  My six drives (3 large and 3 very small partitions) then turned into one large drive (My RAID0!).  I think the 3 small partitions (10 MB or so) are the RAID meta data.  W10 install went fine!  I strongly suggest you try this.  It is a very good confidence builder!  Lots of !!!  I then tried the USB stick with my installation files and the six files would not turn into the one RAID0 no matter what drivers I tried.  I do lots of things to create my USB including creating an ISO and using Rufus to write the stick.  Apparently some thing is bad with my process or the way AMD Option ROM is working.  Two specific things I do is  Disable CMS and then ONLY UEFI devices show in the F11 boot selection menu.  I also make sure the the RAID is GPT initialized using Diskpart.  I have two experiments to run today to narrow down my problem and will report later, here: http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=6859&KW=rufus&PID=41054&title=x399-fatality-1950x-raid-problems#41054
Please don't surrender, we can beat this monster.  Enjoy, John.

EDIT: I was successful today.  Please see the thread I pointed to above.  Also I should say that I did not set SATA to RAID, only NVMe RAID to Enabled and set CSM to Disabled.


Edited by MisterJ - 20 Dec 2017 at 4:41am
Fat1 X399 Pro Gaming, TR 1950X, RAID0 3xSamsung SSD 960 EVO, G.SKILL FlareX F4-3200C14Q-32GFX, Win 10 x64 Pro, Enermx Platimax 850, Enermx Liqtech TR4 CPU Cooler, Radeon RX580, BIOS 2.00, 2xHDDs WD
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote DbRbt Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Dec 2017 at 12:38pm
Originally posted by MisterJ MisterJ wrote:

DbRbt, I still have not given up on AMD UEFI RAID and truly believe I will slay this dragon.  I hope you will not surrender either. 

MisterJ,  thanks for cheering me up?¦LOL! I have to say.. been using RAID controllers since 1997, and have never had problems like this.

 I heard from AMD support..finally. They did not have anything substantive. They suspect a "config error", and asked for screen shots of UEFI.

 Sent them pics of UEFI and also of Windows initially recognizing the RAID1 array, and then their software blocking it with the idiotic "licensing" message. I'll let you know if they figure out the issue...but I bet it is AMDs UEFI or drivers causing it... because....

 In the process of reconfiguring my drives back into RAID1, so that I can send AMD pics, I realized that this rabbit hole is much deeper than I thought. I encountered so many new problems (all within UEFI, unrelated to windows), that I am convinced AMD never before wrote RAID control software ?? seems it was written by complete dilettantes:

1. Encountered ghost arrays, which you spoke about. Apparently, UEFI does not like when disks are removed from an array, before the array is explicitly deleted. Reconnecting  those drives back, even after being cleaned using DISKPART, still causes the array to reappear, but in a strange state,... plus the drives appear as individual arrays. At that point, the ghost array cannot be deleted. To delete the ghost array, the disks must be reattached to the ghost array, and then the array explicitly deleted.

 A different problem:

2. Disks which were part of a RAID1 array , after being removed from the array, disconnected from MB, cleaned using DISKPART and reconnected, cause an unrelated boot disk to go offline --  a disk which never had any relationship to the RAID array. The moment these disks are again disconnected from the MB, the boot disk immediately comes on-line (reboot is not required)!!  The only way I found to fix this is to initialize the drives (on a different computer) using MBR scheme (GPT sometimes works and sometimes fails). After that, reconnecting the drives back  to the MB does not cause problems with the boot disk. Amazing!

 This looks the AMD software  was done with no QA testing whatsoever!

 Cheers!

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote MisterJ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25 Dec 2017 at 12:28am
DbRbt, I have lost track of your setup and RAID use.  This is the advantage of posting your specifications in your signature for the setup part - please do.  Now, if you will post what RAID arrays you are building - NVMe or HDD, etc,  I will be good.  My RAID0 boot device (3X Samsung 960).  I posted this set of instructions for another user and I hope you are doing the same:
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.

Please tell me where your install media came from (USB?) or how you created it.
You can take screenshots in the BIOS using F12 with a FAT formatted USB plugged.  Enjoy, John.
Fat1 X399 Pro Gaming, TR 1950X, RAID0 3xSamsung SSD 960 EVO, G.SKILL FlareX F4-3200C14Q-32GFX, Win 10 x64 Pro, Enermx Platimax 850, Enermx Liqtech TR4 CPU Cooler, Radeon RX580, BIOS 2.00, 2xHDDs WD
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