OCZ Agility EX x4:Raid0 OS Win 7 Install Problems

adsgry · 10-28-09, 10:56 PM

I can't get Windows 7 64bit to install. All the hardware is installed correctly from what I can see, I've built a few machines in my time so I feel fairly comfortable with that. I created a raid0 in the Rocket Raid 4320 utility with 4x Agility EX ssd's (Indilinx controller), all appears normal, although I couldn't get it to verify the raid, but bios picked it up. After I get to Windows install screen and load the preinstall raid driver for the Rocket Raid and begin building the system it hangs at the "expanding files" stage or gets part of the way through. I did get it to the the desktop once but it fell over before I could install eVGA Classified mb drivers. I tried to reboot in safe mode but couldn't get back in. It mostly hangs on the scan disc page which counts down and locks on 1sec left or occasionally a drive will go missing and the raid goes offline. A soft, then hard power down mostly resets the problem with the raid and it comes back online when i boot. I tried disabling in the bios all the on board controllers that weren't being used in case they were interfering (there are no other HDD's connected, just the optical drive), and that didn't help.

Other troubleshooting: I checked the firmware version on the ssd's and it is current, so nothing to flash, the bios utility of the 4320 is current as is the mb bios. The OS install version is current as well. The RR4320 preinstall driver is current and is listed as a discrete Win7 driver although it seems to be the same as the vista driver. I checked and rechecked that all drivers were 64bit supported and everything was good there. I tried installing with only 1 stick of ram rather than the full 6 sticks as occasionally what seemed to be a memory error would come up and from experience thats worked in the past for similar install problems. I tried multiple install discs to rule out a faulty install disc and i removed the second Ati 4870x2 and the tv card to rule out any interferences channeling through the pci bus. Cooling is fine and power seems fine.

I did put the RR4320 and 4 Agility ssd's into a p55 gigabyte board I also have and did get a system to hold albeit a little glitchy. Subsequently on that build I ran Everest's read suite test and blasted average linear read speeds of around 1000mb/s which got me a little excited. Anyway I'm out of new ideas on how to trouble shoot the problem so any help would be appreciated. I apologise in advance for the length of this post but I thought it was better to give a little more info on the problem, cheers.

Hardware
MB: eVGA X58 Classified Motherboard LGA1366
RAM: G Skill 6G(6x1G) DDR3 PC12800(F3-12800CL8T-3GBPI-B)
CPU: Intel i7 920
PCI RAID CONTROLLER: Rocket Raid 4320
SSD: (4) Agility EX 64gb
CASE: Antec P193 Performance One Black ATX Mid Tower NO PSU
PSU: Corsair HX-1000 1000W ATX Modular Power Supply
OPT: LG H22NS50 SATA 22X+- Super Multi DVDR Black with Software
PERIPHERAL DEVICES: Hauppauge Nova-TD-500 MCE Dual-Digital TV Tuner PCI card OEM
VGA: SLI(2) ATI 4870x2
DISPLAY: DELL 30"
KB: Logitech G15
MOUSE: Logitech G9

System
OS: Windows 7 64bit Build 7600

Evilsizer · 10-28-09, 11:32 PM

well one of two things, either bios or driver issue. the only thing i can suggest is to wait for a new bios or call evga about getting one that might fix your issue. the drivers for win7 as far as i can tell are vista drivers, nothing special...

though i will ask what promted using 4 of them at 64gb instead of 2 128gb. i only ask cause the on board is great with 2 ssd's but 4, you would take the SB to much. though right now i would suggest trying the onboard raid feature with the EX's to see what happens.

HDCHOPPER · 10-29-09, 12:33 AM

Try the sanitary Erase tool on the OCZ forum , the OS creates a 100mb partition for it's self that possibly got messed up ...

Badbonji · 10-29-09, 04:49 AM

I always had problems with Windows 7 installing to Raid because an external hard disk was plugged in, not sure why though...

HDCHOPPER · 10-29-09, 06:17 PM

Also heare ppl fixing the problem with running diskpart from install disk and using the "clean" function ,then booting back in and doing the install ... wourth a try

adsgry · 10-29-09, 10:53 PM

I decided to use 4 ssd's instead of 2 larger drives for performance ie data write/reads spread across 4 ssd controllers instead of 2. Im going to try using the southbridge with 2 and see how that goes, but the SB will saturate with 4, hence why i need the pci card to handle the data load, thx for the suggestions about the bios, I'll give it a go.

adsgry · 10-29-09, 10:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCHOPPER

Try the sanitary Erase tool on the OCZ forum , the OS creates a 100mb partition for it's self that possibly got messed up ...

I'll check out this tool, the 100mb petition you're talking about, is that the petition that is displayed during the Windows 7 install at the drive selection prompt?

adsgry · 10-29-09, 11:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Badbonji

I always had problems with Windows 7 installing to Raid because an external hard disk was plugged in, not sure why though...

, no external HDD's are plugged in, but I do have a little logitech 4 port powered hub running the mouse and the keyboard so I'll bypass it and feed them direct because it might be interfering...worth a try anyway, cheers.

adsgry · 10-29-09, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCHOPPER

Also heare ppl fixing the problem with running diskpart from install disk and using the "clean" function ,then booting back in and doing the install ... wourth a try

I'll give this a go too if I'm still not getting anywhere, cheers.

deathman20 · 10-30-09, 11:32 AM

Man that is one beefy OS setup with those drives

You could use 3 drives in Raid 0 using on board controller and get or use nearly all of its potential. Adding a 4th would be overkill using on board raid controller and saturate the SB fully.

Sorry can't help with me having zero knowledge on raid cards.

adsgry · 11-02-09, 08:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deathman20

Man that is one beefy OS setup with those drives

You could use 3 drives in Raid 0 using on board controller and get or use nearly all of its potential. Adding a 4th would be overkill using on board raid controller and saturate the SB fully.

Sorry can't help with me having zero knowledge on raid cards.

I installed 3 of the ssd's through the on board Intel sata raid controller and the os went on without a glitch. I'm going to go to high point and see if they have any answers so I can use the pci raid card and therefore the 4 ssd'd in a raid zero. i've paid the bucks so I'm not ready to give up on it. I'm get high 600s in a quick read benchmark test using Everest...which is nothing to complain about.

Joeteck · 11-02-09, 08:52 AM

This is what I would do.

1. Install to a single drive , using the on board controller.

2. After the install of W7, install the RAID driver for the card. Reboot.

3. Image your drive using Acronis or what ever you use.

4. Re create the RAID 0 array.

5. Restore your image to your rocket RAID.

6. Done.

This is an alternative to get around a few flaws in W7. Worked for me here.

Evilsizer · 11-02-09, 04:47 PM

well acronis doesnt keep the correct alinement for the ssd's. unless there is a updated version that does so. the alinement is key for SSD's to be at their highest read/writes. other wise just using a HD alinement will cause the ssd to suffer a bit in read/writes.

HDCHOPPER · 11-03-09, 06:07 AM

No alignment nessary with Vista & W7 both by default do a valid alignment ..It's XP that NEEDS alignment ..

Using W7 best to do a default install to a raw drive perserving it's 100mb partition it creates ( and only one haveing a perveious install on the drive you sometimes end up with it trying to create another and install problems ...

Best to do a Sanitary Erase first(tool at OCZ) then a stright foward default install to the raw drive of Vista or W7....

Joeteck · 11-03-09, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsizer

well acronis doesnt keep the correct alinement for the ssd's. unless there is a updated version that does so. the alinement is key for SSD's to be at their highest read/writes. other wise just using a HD alinement will cause the ssd to suffer a bit in read/writes.

Also TRIM does not work in RAID...

Evilsizer · 11-03-09, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCHOPPER

No alignment nessary with Vista & W7 both by default do a valid alignment ..It's XP that NEEDS alignment ..

well over at ocz many reported that they needed to align the drive with vista. my point was that the backup program doesnt preserve the alignment for ssd's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeteck

Also TRIM does not work in RAID...

right but GC does, problem solved, no?

Joeteck · 11-03-09, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsizer

well over at ocz many reported that they needed to align the drive with vista. my point was that the backup program doesnt preserve the alignment for ssd's.

right but GC does, problem solved, no?

Whats GC?

EarthDog · 11-03-09, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Evilsizer

well over at ocz many reported that they needed to align the drive with vista. my point was that the backup program doesnt preserve the alignment for ssd's.

right but GC does, problem solved, no?

Garbage Collection does work with Raid I believe...

Evilsizer · 11-03-09, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeteck

Whats GC?

what ED said...

Quote:

Originally Posted by EarthDog

Garbage Collection does work with Raid I believe...

indeed it does and for os's that dont support TRIM.. from the horses mouth
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...ad.php?t=63498

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tony

1.4 has TRIM and will suit win7 and any OS with TRIM support.

1.41 has GC and will suit any OS with no TRIM support or raid arrays.

OS with TRIM support = windows 7

All others do not have TRIM although MacOSX and Linux will have it soon.

^^ applies to Vertex,Vertex-EX, Agility, Agility-EX

Mr Alpha · 11-04-09, 05:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tony

All others do not have TRIM although MacOSX and Linux will have it soon.

It will be coming to OS X? On AnandTech they said Apple hadn't said anything about supporting TRIM.

adsgry · 11-08-09, 11:33 PM

I have successfully built a raid 0 through the onboard controller and installed win7 on it, not a glitch. I have just hooked up a rocket raid 4321(i also have the 4320 which i was trying to build a sys on earlier i this post) I have a spare 4xagility ex ssd's which I am now going to try and use to build a raid 0 through the RR4321 and get a system on it. Im going to clean them first so everything is fresh and try and get a system on it. I have the working win7 os on the raid0 x 3 agility ex's and I'll take an image of it and try Joeteck's idea and see if the problem lies with the win 7 installer. I'll build the raid first and reboot in the working OS and see if can see it then if it does ill try and dump the os image onto it. Keep you posted. PS I had the extra RR because I was trying to do the same thing at work on an xserve and had to abort due to freezing issues when copying files. Its not the ideal test scenario as we use the xserve for work so I got a little scared and am now going to test everything in a windows environment on my home hardware and i figure if I can solve the issues here it may lead the way to solving the issues with the xserve. Stay tuned.

adsgry · 11-09-09, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HDCHOPPER

Try the sanitary Erase tool on the OCZ forum , the OS creates a 100mb partition for it's self that possibly got messed up ...

From what the oz-c forums are saying, my agility ex's with 1.31 fw don't respond to sanitary erase because the function is built in.

adsgry · 11-09-09, 07:47 AM

After trying several times to install the ssd's on the RR I am letting it go before it drives me insane. Highpoint who manufacture the raid controller card still have not responded to my support requests so I don't really have any other option but to let it go for now. On the website it says the card doesn't support x58 or the agility cards so that is a bad omen. I can understand that it hasn't yet caught up with the agility ex in its driver release but the lack of support for the x58 baffles me considering how long its been out. I imagine they will address the support for the agility ex ssd'd given that it will be popular and people will want to use pci raid controllers to deal with the increased data transfer rates that these cards are able to handle, but for now I'm switching back to the onboard. Thanks for the help nonetheless.

10-28-09, 10:56 PM	#1
adsgry New Member Join Date: Oct 2009	OCZ Agility EX x4:Raid0 OS Win 7 Install Problems I can't get Windows 7 64bit to install. All the hardware is installed correctly from what I can see, I've built a few machines in my time so I feel fairly comfortable with that. I created a raid0 in the Rocket Raid 4320 utility with 4x Agility EX ssd's (Indilinx controller), all appears normal, although I couldn't get it to verify the raid, but bios picked it up. After I get to Windows install screen and load the preinstall raid driver for the Rocket Raid and begin building the system it hangs at the "expanding files" stage or gets part of the way through. I did get it to the the desktop once but it fell over before I could install eVGA Classified mb drivers. I tried to reboot in safe mode but couldn't get back in. It mostly hangs on the scan disc page which counts down and locks on 1sec left or occasionally a drive will go missing and the raid goes offline. A soft, then hard power down mostly resets the problem with the raid and it comes back online when i boot. I tried disabling in the bios all the on board controllers that weren't being used in case they were interfering (there are no other HDD's connected, just the optical drive), and that didn't help. Other troubleshooting: I checked the firmware version on the ssd's and it is current, so nothing to flash, the bios utility of the 4320 is current as is the mb bios. The OS install version is current as well. The RR4320 preinstall driver is current and is listed as a discrete Win7 driver although it seems to be the same as the vista driver. I checked and rechecked that all drivers were 64bit supported and everything was good there. I tried installing with only 1 stick of ram rather than the full 6 sticks as occasionally what seemed to be a memory error would come up and from experience thats worked in the past for similar install problems. I tried multiple install discs to rule out a faulty install disc and i removed the second Ati 4870x2 and the tv card to rule out any interferences channeling through the pci bus. Cooling is fine and power seems fine. I did put the RR4320 and 4 Agility ssd's into a p55 gigabyte board I also have and did get a system to hold albeit a little glitchy. Subsequently on that build I ran Everest's read suite test and blasted average linear read speeds of around 1000mb/s which got me a little excited. Anyway I'm out of new ideas on how to trouble shoot the problem so any help would be appreciated. I apologise in advance for the length of this post but I thought it was better to give a little more info on the problem, cheers. Hardware MB: eVGA X58 Classified Motherboard LGA1366 RAM: G Skill 6G(6x1G) DDR3 PC12800(F3-12800CL8T-3GBPI-B) CPU: Intel i7 920 PCI RAID CONTROLLER: Rocket Raid 4320 SSD: (4) Agility EX 64gb CASE: Antec P193 Performance One Black ATX Mid Tower NO PSU PSU: Corsair HX-1000 1000W ATX Modular Power Supply OPT: LG H22NS50 SATA 22X+- Super Multi DVDR Black with Software PERIPHERAL DEVICES: Hauppauge Nova-TD-500 MCE Dual-Digital TV Tuner PCI card OEM VGA: SLI(2) ATI 4870x2 DISPLAY: DELL 30" KB: Logitech G15 MOUSE: Logitech G9 System OS: Windows 7 64bit Build 7600 Last edited by adsgry; 10-28-09 at 11:02 PM.

10-28-09, 11:32 PM	#2
Evilsizer Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Austin,Texas	well one of two things, either bios or driver issue. the only thing i can suggest is to wait for a new bios or call evga about getting one that might fix your issue. the drivers for win7 as far as i can tell are vista drivers, nothing special... though i will ask what promted using 4 of them at 64gb instead of 2 128gb. i only ask cause the on board is great with 2 ssd's but 4, you would take the SB to much. though right now i would suggest trying the onboard raid feature with the EX's to see what happens. __________________ i7 920@3.6ghz \| Asus RE-II-Gene \| OCZ3P1333LV3GK \| (2)4850CF \| C650TX \| OCZ AGILITY 60gig(x2 in raid-0) 2 i7 860's(1 WIP!), 1 i5 750 for rosetta! 2x9600GO's for FAH ATM! Looking for some info on the Abit IP35-Pro? Want a mATX P55 board with overclocking features? currently on hold "I Love To Camp!" "Comensing Shock Therapy!" HeatWare

10-29-09, 12:33 AM	#3
HDCHOPPER Team 32 Folding Member Join Date: Mar 2008	Try the sanitary Erase tool on the OCZ forum , the OS creates a 100mb partition for it's self that possibly got messed up ... __________________ Working on my I7 Asus P6T SE build feel free to donate lol

10-29-09, 04:49 AM	#4
Badbonji Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Cambridge, UK	I always had problems with Windows 7 installing to Raid because an external hard disk was plugged in, not sure why though... __________________ Systems Desktop \| Laptop - MSI GT725 i7 965 4.35Ghz 1.37Vcore P9500 3.13Ghz 6Gb G.Skill 1600Mhz 1.5V 4Gb DDR2 1000Mhz BFG GTX295 RMA :( Mobility HD4850 @ 550/1800 2 x 150Gb Raptors raid 0 500Gb Sata II Antec 1200 + Internal WC MCP 655/ EK 250 Res/ EK Supreme/ Black Ice GTX480

10-29-09, 06:17 PM	#5
HDCHOPPER Team 32 Folding Member Join Date: Mar 2008	Also heare ppl fixing the problem with running diskpart from install disk and using the "clean" function ,then booting back in and doing the install ... wourth a try __________________ Working on my I7 Asus P6T SE build feel free to donate lol

10-29-09, 10:53 PM	#6
adsgry New Member Join Date: Oct 2009	I decided to use 4 ssd's instead of 2 larger drives for performance ie data write/reads spread across 4 ssd controllers instead of 2. Im going to try using the southbridge with 2 and see how that goes, but the SB will saturate with 4, hence why i need the pci card to handle the data load, thx for the suggestions about the bios, I'll give it a go.

10-30-09, 11:32 AM	#10
deathman20 High Speed Senior Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Where the Cheese Heads Live	Man that is one beefy OS setup with those drives You could use 3 drives in Raid 0 using on board controller and get or use nearly all of its potential. Adding a 4th would be overkill using on board raid controller and saturate the SB fully. Sorry can't help with me having zero knowledge on raid cards. __________________ -=The Gamer=- EVGA X58 \| i7 920 C0 (3841A578) @ 3.67Ghz w/ 1.14375V \| 40C Idle / 66C Load (LinX) 6 Gig G.Skill PC3-12800 8-8-8-21 @ 1632Mhz w/ 1.6V \| TR Ultra eXtreme 120 w/ 2 Fans EVGA GTX285 @ 702/1584/1404 \| 36C Idle / 72C Load \| 2x 80Gig Intel G2 SSD's Modified Antec P180 Case \| SilverStone DA750 \| Dell 2405FPW 24" Screen -=The Server=- DFI LT LP X38-T2R \| E1400 @ 2.0Ghz w/ 1.275V \| 32C Idle / 48C Load (Normal Load) 2 Gig G.Skill PC2-8500 5-5-5-15 @ 800Mhz w/ 1.8V \| Stock E8400 Heatsink w/ MX-2 ATI 4350 \| 2x Seagate 320Gig \| 2x WD Green 1TB \| WD 160Gig External Offsite Backup SilverStone Black LC10B-E Media Center \| Corsair CMPSU-400CX Code of the Week: Oni Likes It In The Cartilage \| Heat

11-02-09, 08:52 AM	#12
Joeteck Storage Content Editor Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Long Island	This is what I would do. 1. Install to a single drive , using the on board controller. 2. After the install of W7, install the RAID driver for the card. Reboot. 3. Image your drive using Acronis or what ever you use. 4. Re create the RAID 0 array. 5. Restore your image to your rocket RAID. 6. Done. This is an alternative to get around a few flaws in W7. Worked for me here. __________________ www.heatware.com Is your Screen saver running? Then Start folding with TEAM32!!! Thermal Take Armor Series Case w/250mm fan PC Power & Cooling 750 Watt Quad 60Amp 12v Rail Intel i7 860 @ 4116Ghz 4 gig of Gskill 9-9-9-24 2000Mhz 2 x 150 gig raptors in RAID 0, 4 x 250 Gig Seagate 410's in RAID 0 (931Gig for games) 468MB/s Evga Geforce GTX 280 1Gig Gigabyte GA-P55-UD5 Gateway 2485W 24" Widescreen, 1080p

11-02-09, 04:47 PM	#13
Evilsizer Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Austin,Texas	well acronis doesnt keep the correct alinement for the ssd's. unless there is a updated version that does so. the alinement is key for SSD's to be at their highest read/writes. other wise just using a HD alinement will cause the ssd to suffer a bit in read/writes. __________________ i7 920@3.6ghz \| Asus RE-II-Gene \| OCZ3P1333LV3GK \| (2)4850CF \| C650TX \| OCZ AGILITY 60gig(x2 in raid-0) 2 i7 860's(1 WIP!), 1 i5 750 for rosetta! 2x9600GO's for FAH ATM! Looking for some info on the Abit IP35-Pro? Want a mATX P55 board with overclocking features? currently on hold "I Love To Camp!" "Comensing Shock Therapy!" HeatWare

11-03-09, 06:07 AM	#14
HDCHOPPER Team 32 Folding Member Join Date: Mar 2008	No alignment nessary with Vista & W7 both by default do a valid alignment ..It's XP that NEEDS alignment .. Using W7 best to do a default install to a raw drive perserving it's 100mb partition it creates ( and only one haveing a perveious install on the drive you sometimes end up with it trying to create another and install problems ... Best to do a Sanitary Erase first(tool at OCZ) then a stright foward default install to the raw drive of Vista or W7.... __________________ Working on my I7 Asus P6T SE build feel free to donate lol

11-08-09, 11:33 PM	#21
adsgry New Member Join Date: Oct 2009	I have successfully built a raid 0 through the onboard controller and installed win7 on it, not a glitch. I have just hooked up a rocket raid 4321(i also have the 4320 which i was trying to build a sys on earlier i this post) I have a spare 4xagility ex ssd's which I am now going to try and use to build a raid 0 through the RR4321 and get a system on it. Im going to clean them first so everything is fresh and try and get a system on it. I have the working win7 os on the raid0 x 3 agility ex's and I'll take an image of it and try Joeteck's idea and see if the problem lies with the win 7 installer. I'll build the raid first and reboot in the working OS and see if can see it then if it does ill try and dump the os image onto it. Keep you posted. PS I had the extra RR because I was trying to do the same thing at work on an xserve and had to abort due to freezing issues when copying files. Its not the ideal test scenario as we use the xserve for work so I got a little scared and am now going to test everything in a windows environment on my home hardware and i figure if I can solve the issues here it may lead the way to solving the issues with the xserve. Stay tuned.

11-09-09, 07:47 AM	#23
adsgry New Member Join Date: Oct 2009	After trying several times to install the ssd's on the RR I am letting it go before it drives me insane. Highpoint who manufacture the raid controller card still have not responded to my support requests so I don't really have any other option but to let it go for now. On the website it says the card doesn't support x58 or the agility cards so that is a bad omen. I can understand that it hasn't yet caught up with the agility ex in its driver release but the lack of support for the x58 baffles me considering how long its been out. I imagine they will address the support for the agility ex ssd'd given that it will be popular and people will want to use pci raid controllers to deal with the increased data transfer rates that these cards are able to handle, but for now I'm switching back to the onboard. Thanks for the help nonetheless.