Storage having trouble with creating my RAID5 array

hi all,
i have three 3tb drives all connected to my motherboard. they are all detected in the bios, and i have placed them all in a RAID5 group in the RAID config page just after the bios.

when i created the group, i said ok to wipe the drives etc... the first thing that made me think all was not well was that it only took a moment to create the array. i'm sure these things take a while to build...

i have booted into windows, and i can still access one of the 3tb drive in My Computer (is used it before just on its own for storage), and i have attached a screenshot of disk management.

i was under the impression that the new RAID array would appear as a single drive, which i could then format normally in windows.

where have i gone wrong?

thanks!

PS: disk0 is my OS SSD, disk4 is another hard drive which isnt in the array, and disks1,2,3 are the 3tb drive i want in the array.

 

You say Disk 1 is a 3TB drive but it's only showing as 750gb?? Am I missing something?

 

it is not displaying correctly in disk managment, it is actually a 3tb disk

EDIT: and in the bios it shows as a 3tb drive

 

That could be one of the problems with why the array is not creating correctly...

I'd check that out first if I were you...

Normally when creating a raid array through disk management you need all drives as unassigned iirc

 

do i still need to create the array in disk management if i create it in the bios?

 

I don't think you've created the array correctly.

The disks shouldn't be showing in Disk Management at all once they are in an array created by the RAID BIOS. For 3x 3TB drives in RAID5, all you should see is a single un-allocated ~6TB drive.

 

^i thought that was the problem. i'm going to try deleting the array and making it again.

 

so i just rebooted, deleted the old array, created a new one and have been presented with the exact same situation...

 

The drives are plugged into the RAID controller SATA ports on the mobo?

Also the Intel RAID controller UI isn't the friendliest thing, might be worth looking for a tutorial on YouTube just to be sure you're doing it right.

 

i assume they are plugged into the correct sata ports as the raid configuration windows detects them all.

they are connected to light blue ports on the motherboard. will have a look for a video now.

 

this is a pic of my RAID setup from the bios

 

Looks fine to me!

 

ok, all sorted now after reinstalling the intel drivers from the asus site. i already had them and just reinstalled over the top.

the problem now is speed. i am copying from a separate hard drive (disk4 in the screenshot) to the array and am getting 5mb/second ....

 

My two pence would be, does the raid really need to be bootable?

It could be that the raid manager is making these disks non-GPT? (Which is required due to their size?)

But of course I don't know anything about anything, so grain of salt and all.

EDIT: ninja'd and clearly I am a moron.

 

it certainly does not need to be bootable. i had to convert the array to a GPT disk in disk manager before formatting it.

 

Ah okay, I live and learn!

Will be setting up a raid 5 array soon for myself, so glad to hear you got it sorted.

 

remember to not use the array is one disk fails until after you have replaced an rebuild the array other wise you will lose everything on next failure!