Windows 8 identifying RAID-0 SSD array as a HDD

J

jolli

Gawd
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I'm having an issue with Windows 8 identifying my two Intel 510 120GB's as a HDD under Optimize Drives. I was hoping to be able to manually TRIM the drives, but this issue prevents me from doing so as it will attempt a defrag.

I'm attaching this image to help illuminate the situation:

n00t.png


From everything that I can find, Windows 'should' be identifying the RAID-0 drives as an SSD under Optimize Drives. Forcing Windows to run the built in performance tool on just Drive E shows that all benchmark scores are well above necessary.

Updating drivers and Intel Rapid Storage didn't resolve the issue (Intel RST itself sees the drives as SSD's). I have also reinstalled Windows 8. I would love any help or advice that others may have! For now I've simply disable scheduled optimization to prevent the drives from being defragged, but I would prefer to fix this issue if possible

Basic specs:

Windows 8 Pro
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming w/ bios 1.3
Intel i7 4770K
32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport VLP
Intel X-25M G2 120GB for the OS (Recognized as SSD just fine.)
2 x Intel 510 120GB for Steam/Games (Drive E, not recognized as should be. Drives are set to write-through as I don't care about write performance.)
WD Caviar Green 1TB to hold downloaded files
 
Try re-running Windows Experience Index with winsat formal from cmd line, rather than just the disk bench. Or re-run through Performance Information and Tools in Control Panel.

That board should have the OPROM to TRIM SSD's in RAID. What version of the RST driver are you running?
 
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bigdogchris said:
Try re-running Windows Experience Index with winsat formal from cmd line, rather than just the disk bench. Or re-run through Performance Information and Tools in Control Panel.

That board should have the OPROM to TRIM SSD's in RAID. What version of the RST driver are you running?
Click to expand...

I believe I had the RST version installed from the vendor page, but I can't access it right now so I can't verify the version. I went ahead and downloaded the latest from Intel and installed them (12.5).

I just tried doing a WinSAT formal as well as the clear and re-run through control panel with no luck as well. I even did a few restarts, including the "advanced shutdown" that Windows 8 likes to hide away.

I'm officially perplexed! :confused:
 
Did you clone the drive at all or was the raid set up after you installed 8?

If you have an external drive, copy the E:\ drive to the external then break the raid. Rerun the assessment and verify both disk are detected as SSD, then recreate the raid volume.
 
It was a fresh setup after I installed Windows on the main drive. I'll try breaking the RAID though, as I can't think of any other way to troubleshoot this.
 
I broke the array and formatted the drives individually; they identified as SSD's without issue.

I rebuilt the array, re-ran all the WEI tests, and the RAID-0 array still identifies as a HDD. At this point I'm not sure what else I can do. I don't really want to reinstall windows, so I guess I'll just have to live with it. :mad:
 
It looks like windows is still defragging those SSDs, unless it shows "0 days" for SSDs be default (which is dumb).. you do not want to be defragging SSDs.
 
There are still problems with windows 8 and RAID0 arrays.

You might have to switch back to windows 7 to get this to work
 
CPL0 said:
Then you've made things worse. Trim for RAID0 does not work in RST12.5.
Click to expand...

Good catch. I updated to RST 12.7.1 and reran all tests, but I'm still getting the array identified as a HDD.
 
staticlag said:
There are still problems with windows 8 and RAID0 arrays.

You might have to switch back to windows 7 to get this to work
Click to expand...

It looks like there are indeed some issues with the combination. From what I have found while searching, there are a fair amount of others with the same issue, and only a few who have had it "magically" start working right one day. I waited almost 30 days for the "magic" to find me, but no luck.

Since the drives are only used to play games, occasionally, I'm hoping the onboard garbage collection can keep things working well enough until this gets fixed. I could really benefit from a few larger, more modern, SSD drives and do away with RAID-0. It's just hard to part with the old Intel ones I paid a small fortune (to me) for! :eek:
 
FWIW I have a couple of RAID0 and they are both recognized as SSD's in W8 and W8.1, however I am using RST 11.2 mostly as currently I see no benefit in running 12.x on pre 8-series.

When you say you tried running winsat did you try admin cmd "winsat formal -restart clean"?
 
Some one correct me if I am wrong but as I understand raid,unless you are running a expensive raid controler card you cant do trim type operations in a raid setup with ssd drives. And your 2 drives should only show up as a single drive.

update: I did some looking and if you do have a intel 7 chipset or newer their is raid trim support but like stated above it is kind of hit or miss with windows 8 for some reason
 
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CPL0 said:
FWIW I have a couple of RAID0 and they are both recognized as SSD's in W8 and W8.1, however I am using RST 11.2 mostly as currently I see no benefit in running 12.x on pre 8-series.

When you say you tried running winsat did you try admin cmd "winsat formal -restart clean"?
Click to expand...

I was actually only doing "winsat formal" or "winsat disk -drive e" most of the runs. I tried doing the full "-restart clean" just now, but it still shows up as a hard drive.

I'm curious if anyone with Z87 + RAID 0 SSD is having luck with this issue. I could try to install the RST 12.8 beta drivers, but I hesitate to try something that isn't WHQL certified when it comes to storage.

If it's working for you, I definitely wouldn't update!
 
Oh, I've tried updates 11.5+... 12.x... and for me 11.2 still remains the best performer on 7-series and 6-series boards. The only negative thing about 11.2 is it can not be used with BIOS UEFI RAID driver. 12.x does provide DSA for 8-series so might be some benefit there otherwise 11.2 seems the better choice so far. I think if you were able to run 11.2 jolli, you wouldn't have this problem.


kirk121 said:
I did some looking and if you do have a intel 7 chipset or newer their is raid trim support
Click to expand...
Actually RAID0 trim support is also possible for older chipsets like 6-series, 5-Series, 4-Series, X58, X48 etc...
 
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