Interesting Windows install issue with RAID and an SSD

Question

I have been trying for days to solve this issue, so any help would be appreciated. Here is the issue:

I have a Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 motherboard. Here is a link to the manual and pages starting at 76 are in particular what I am working with.

I have a RAID 5 array setup on the southbridge ports 0-3 with 4 x 2TB hard drives.

I have a SSD on port 4 or 5 and a blu-ray drive on the other port, either 4 or 5.

I have then configured the BIOS to RAID for the "OnChip SATA Type", and "OnChip SATA Port4/5 Type" is set to IDE.

The main issue happens when I try to install Windows 8, I am installing to the SSD and it goes through the install just fine. When it tries to reboot to finish up the install, it just hangs when it tries to load the operating system. I have tried the Win8 install with loading the RAID drivers and not loading the RAID drivers. I didn't think it should matter as the SSD is not part of the RAID array and is actually not technically using the same controller, but just letting you all know what I have tried. Both ways result in the same "hang" on Windows load issue.

Just as a side note, it works perfectly and I can install Windows on the SSD and run everything if the 4 HDDs are not in a RAID array. However, this is not the configuration that I would like as I want the extra performance and redundancy that RAID 5 gives on my "data" drives.

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I ran into a similar problem. On line advice was to disconnect the raid and reset bios to ahci. This permitted the install bu like you was unable to run with the raid re-established. The downloaded Win8 drivers from Gigabyte gave no joy - The install couldn't proceed because the drives couldn't be seen.

I finally resorted to carefully reading the instructions in the manual (which were for win7) and at the point of the install where I was prompted to add a driver, I inserted the MB cd rom disk and found the win7 raid 64 driver where instructed and selected it. It worked perfectly and the system installed with the raid setup on line. Who knows??? At least the problem was solved for me.