Recently upgraded my +2 years properly running Win 7 rig to Win 8.1.
Since then I'm facing Raid 10 issues, tried various OROM and RST versions but can't seem to get it all working.
Found set-ups where sleep worked okay if only left to sleep for few minutes, but after longer period no wake up at all (only hard shutdown would help). Found setups where on shutdown the hdd heads would not park properly (continue to tick, only hard shutdown helps). Found setups with both of this or only one of these (or similar) problems.
Can anybody shed some light on this?
(bought the MB in part because of the many Sata ports and Intel Raid support but am starting to think I need to buy a PCI-E Sata Raid controller).
System specifics
- Motherboard = ASRock Z77 Extreme4
- Raid chip set = Intel 80801 (ICH8R/ICH9R) Sata RAID Controller
- BIOS = latest 2.9 (but also tested below with older 2.8 with same results)
- Intel Raid chipset usage:
- Raid 10 with 3 Samsung 750 GB drives and 1 Seagate 750 GB (replaced broken Samsung) on Intel Sata2 ports. Disks monitored with Hard Disk Sentinel, all at 100% health
- 2 other disks: 120 GB SSD with operating system & applications @ Intel Sata3 / 2 TB general storage @ Intel Sata3
- OS = Windows 8.1 64bit fully up to date including optional updates (previous Windows 7 64bit) (all optional updates applied after set-up 4 below)
- OROM = see below for various set-ups tested
- RST versions = see below for various set-ups tested
- Power config settings - tested below set-ups with
- Turn of Hard disk drive = both "never" and "after 1 minute"
- Allow Hybrid Sleep = on and off
- Hibernation = off
- BIOS settings - tested below set-ups with all possible bios settings on/off/etc (ACPI / fast boot / Intel rapid start / Deep Sleep / Sata aggressive link power)
- RAID Cache Settings - tested below set-ups with all possible RST cache controls on/off
Other specifics
- Set-up worked without any major problems for +2 years on Windows 7 (occasional BSOD resulting in degraded Raid and rebuilding / verify, but BSOD's not due to Raid)
- With all below problems some errors in event viewer every now and then, but nothing consistent
- Below the various OROM / RST combinations tested after Windows 8.1 installation (in chronological order)
- I do want to use RST since I do want in Windows notification when Raid degrades (I typically sleep my pc due to the way I spend my time behind the machine, I only reboot once every so often)
1 - OROM - 11.2.0.1527 / RST - 11.7.0.1013 (same as previous Win 7 setup, never any prob in Win 7)
- System shut-down - boot took very long ("preparing" notification for + 5 minutes) whereas normal boot is approx 40 seconds (I suspect CHKDSK action but in Win8 this is not shown) - degraded Raid, rebuild
- Sleep wake up immediately - degraded Raid, rebuild
- Sleep wake up after several hours - system would not wake up -> hard reset (power button down) required -> degraded Raid, reset to normal, rebuild
2 - OROM - 11.2.0.1527 / RST - 13.1.0.1058
- Same result as 1
3 - OROM - 13.1.0.2126 / RST - 13.1.0.1058 & 4. - OROM - 13.2.0.2134 / RST - 13.1.0.1058
- System shut-down - RAID disks stuck at head parking (i.e. continuous ticking) -> hard reset (power button down) required -> boot took very long (see preparing note in setup 1) - degraded Raid, rebuild
- Sleep wake up immediately - Raid okay, wakup normal
- Sleep wake up after several hours - system would not wake up -> hard reset (power button down) required -> degraded Raid
5 - Tried many (10+) other combinations of OROM's / RST's
Combinations of
- OROM - 11.2.0.1527 / 11.6.0.1702 / 12.9.0.2006 / 13.1.0.2126 / 13.2.0.2134
- RST - 11.7.0.1013 / 12.0.0.1083 / 12.9.0.1001 / 12.8.0.1016 / 13.1.0.1058
Resulting in similar issues as metioned above.
Not entirely sure what combinations I tried (but not all 25 of them).
6 - For now ended up with OROM - 13.2.0.2134 / RST - 12.8.0.1016
Best combination so far, but have to shut-down instead of sleep. Still require sleep to work properly as well
- System shut-down - Raid okay, boot normal (fast)
- Sleep wake up immediately - degraded Raid, reset to normal, rebuild
- Sleep wake up after several hours - degraded Raid, reset to normal, rebuild