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I got myself a Silicon Image 3114 SATA Controller which is capable of RAIDing two discs. I have two SSD sporting approx. 230 GB each. I wanted to enable RAID 0 (striping) to have one "virtual" drive of 450 GB.

I followed the steps below:

  • Installed the 3114 PCI card on my board.
  • Connected the two SSD to it.
  • On boot, I hit CTRL-S to enter the RAID controller screen and automatically create a RAID 0 array with both SSD's. Cluster size is 64 Kb.
  • I then inserted a USB stick with an updated Windows 10 image. The computer then booted from it, and began Windows installation.
  • At first no drive was being shown, so I added drivers (%3114-CDROM%\SIL3114RAID\Win_64bit). Then I was able to see a single drive.
  • I deleted all the partitions listed and created a new one.
  • I selected the newly created partition and file copy began.

At the end of the files copy Windows had to reboot the system. Upon reboot, I entered the Windows Installation screen once more. I then removed the USB stick and manually reboot. After that, the system informs me that there's no bootable drive.

I already double checked BIOS settings for UEFI configuration and found nothing. I've attempted the steps above many times, even changing cable position and reconfiguring from UEFI to Legacy and vice-versa, tried changing boot order, cluster size to 128K, but nothing works.

What can I do?

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  • I deleted all the partitions listed and created a new one and that was your mistake because UEFI mode requires an ESP (EFI System Partition), a small (300-500MB) FAT32 formatted partition typically at the very beginning of the drive. The Windows installer when given a blank (not formatted) drive will do that automatically without user input but if you're partitioning it yourself you must know what you're doing.
    – user772515
    Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 20:35

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The answer is that you had to add a driver (%3114-CDROM%\SIL3114RAID\Win_64bit) to get Windows to see the RAID 0, which says you don't have a ROM on the SATA controller that automatically makes the RAID available to the computer's BIOS prior to boot. Until that happens it's not going to boot from the RAID 0.

This might entail some firmware or jumper setting one the board that enables such a ROM (get with the manufacturer), assuming that's even possible, but short of that, how is your computer supposed to sense that you've installed some host adapter, with a RAID 0 on it, and that it's supposed to boot from that RAID 0.

The host adapter has to have some ROM on it capable of being configured into an unused memory address space that your computer can notice, on boot, and access, or it's got to supplant your on-board disk controller.

Is there some sort of message that pops up from the SATA controller, on boot, that allows you to enter a configuration screen for it?

Good luck!

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  • how is your computer supposed to sense that you've installed some host adapter Because it detected the array as defined by the user and installed the OS without complaining. Please read my comment above, under the question, in order to understand what actually happened, then edit your question or delete it. It isn't useful and makes a lot of wrong assumptions.
    – user772515
    Commented Apr 23, 2018 at 20:42

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