How to configure raid on amd board 【step by step】 ⭐️

Increasingly, RAID technology is reaching general consumer equipment, especially on laptops based on solid storage and in pre-mounted configurations. But almost all of us can resort to this technology, and today we are going to see how to configure AMD on-board RAID in a simple and fully explained way.

We already anticipated that the procedure is not as simple as in the case of Intel, because here we do need to download a few drivers to load when installing the operating system. Let's see how to do it step by step and without leaving anything on the way.

Index of contents

In this article we are going to mount as an example a RAID 0 with two M.2 PCIe 4.0 drives on a board with an X570 chipset, so we can see the speed that we would obtain in the system with this configuration.

What is a RAID

Before putting our hands in flour, we will briefly explain what this technology consists of and what benefits it can give us compared to a normal hard drive.

RAID comes from the English " Redundant Array of Independent Disks " or said in Spanish, redundant array of independent disks. It consists of the creation of a storage system that allows data to be saved using multiple HDD or SSD hard disks in a distributed way or through replication to ensure its integrity.

The benefits of RAID are no longer only in the hands of corporations or companies with specific servers and SCSI or similar technology. For some years now, many of the motherboards for general consumption have implemented a series of functions that will allow mounting some of the most generic RAIDs. RAID technology is divided into configurations called levels, through which we can obtain different storage results depending on what we are looking for. Basically there are three possibilities that we currently have at AMD:

• RAID 0: with it we will be able to unite two or more identical SSDs or HDDs as if it were a single storage, in order to double the speed and storage capacity, RAID 1: in this case, using two or more drives to replicate the data in them. In other words, what is saved in one will also be saved in another in duplicate. This protects the data against failure of one of the drives. RAID 10: In this case it will be two levels, first we create a RAID 1 to duplicate data, and then two RAID 0 to add speed, so it would take 4 disks.

RAID on AMD motherboards

In this case the number of levels is reduced to 3, which can be implemented from two disk units up to 4 or more. The process of configuring AMD on-board RAID that we will carry out is extensible on all AMD motherboards with chipsets compatible with the technology. In this case the supported chipsets are as follows:

• X399, TRX40X570, X470, X370B450, B350A320

In all chipsets with suitable motherboards we will have the possibility of mounting RAID 0, 1 and 10. We say suitable boards because not all of them have the same number of ports or M.2 slots for units. For example, RAID 10 will only be available for SATA drives if we do not use PCIe expansion cards, since the maximum onboard M.2 slots are 3.

There are other configurations such as RAID 5 and RAID 50 a little more advanced that will also be available if you have 3 or more drives installed. At least that's how it was in previous BIOS configurations that used AMD RAID Array Configuration, a BIOS-independent application on X370, B350, and A320 chipsets .

Configure RAID on AMD Board

We have already seen the configurations supported by the AMD platform for general consumer equipment, so now we see to see in a practical way how to mount one of them step by step. The configuration we make here will be the same for the rest of the options, as long as we have a sufficient number of units installed.

For this we have used an Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero motherboard, which has the following storage specifications:

• 8x SATA III 6Gbps ports, 2x M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, SATA 6Gbps compatible, AMD Store MI compatibility, Units used: 2x Corsair MP600 Gen4 2TB

At this point it is important that we read all the technical data sheet of the board that we have, since in it the manufacturer normally informs about possible PCIe lanes with shared bus width. On this board we should not worry because SATA and PCIe do not share a bus, but in a chipset with a smaller capacity it will seem like the problem and surely certain SATA ports are disabled when using the M.2 slots in SATA mode.

Download drivers for OS installation

It is true that this step could have been done once the RAID was created, but why wait if we are going to have to reinstall the operating system in the RAID anyway?

The drivers and subsequent software can be obtained in two different ways, in the support section of the motherboard itself on the manufacturer's page, or directly in the AMD support section. We will use this last method because it is faster and always has updated drivers.

So we are going to just go to the AMD page, support section and in the list of elements we are going to select the " Chipsets " section, then our platform and finally the chipset in question. In our case it will be the X570.

Next, we are going to select the operating system on the next screen and look for two downloadable ones. AMD RAID Installer and AMD RAID Driver, the first being software that we will install in Windows when we have installed it to manage the RAID, and the second is the drivers that we will use during the installation.

We can save them, for example, on the flash drive where we have placed Windows to later install it or on another that we create appropriate.

Preconfiguration in BIOS

From now on, we strongly recommend disconnecting any other storage drives from the computer so that they do not interfere with the RAID configuration.

Well, the next steps are to adapt certain BIOS parameters to our RAID configuration. Please note that this configuration does not imply that other SATA or PCIe drives cannot be used normally in conjunction with RAID.

We access the BIOS of our board and go to the Boot section. In it we will see an option called Launch CSM, which we will have to configure as " Enabled " if it is not already. With this option we are telling the BIOS to be able to boot from any drive with a system, be it RAID, PCIe or flash drive.

In the same way we will place " UEFI only " in the Boot Device Control section. The latter is not strictly necessary, but it is recommended so that the BIOS itself detects and establishes a correct boot order. The drives that we then install in addition to the RAID will behave like ordinary hard drives.

Next, we go to the " Advanced " section to put the " SATA Mode " option in " RAID ", and " NVMe RAID mode " in " Enabled ". With this we are making sure that we can create RAID configurations in both SATA drives and PCIe drives by M.2, which is what we will do.

In principle, we will not have anything else to configure, although AMD establishes in its guide some extra configurations in CBS and PBS in case we are on a platform with X399 chipset. That is to say, there will be an option " NVMe RAID mode " in both that we will have to put in " Enabled ".

After this we can press F10 to save the changes and restart, accessing the BIOS again to continue with the configuration.

Without further ado, let's stay in the Advanced section of the BIOS and open the application to configure RAID on the AMD board. This application is RAIDXpert2, which must be implemented in all current UEFI BIOS of an AMD card compatible with RAID.

At this point we already have our RAID units installed and the others that we will not use disconnected for greater security.

In the application we have different sections available such as Create Array, Manage Array Properties and Delete Array.

You will notice that we will not have the option to create the RAID activated, and the reason is because the application understands that the two installed disks make up two independent arrays. Then we must select "Delete Array"

Now we will click on “ Check All ” to detect all the drives that have an array. In our case we already had a previous RAID, so it will only appear as a drive. To you, the two independent units will surely appear.

On the right we see a selection box, which we must set to "On" for the application to make the changes that we will request. Next, we move to “ Delete Array (s) ” and confirm the action to clean our units.

If we go back, we will check that the Create array option is already available, so we click on it.

On the next configuration screen we will have to select the type of RAID we want to mount and the relevant parameters. In our case it will be a RAID 0 with the two free drives installed and with the default cache policy parameters.

In the " Select Physical Disks " section we will select the drives that will be involved in the RAID.

Referring to what was previously commented on RAID 5 and 50, we see that these new options do not appear in these new BIOS and RAIDXpert. Having them would have been very positive, since the RAID 5 configuration is widely used to combine file replication with speed.

After this, we will see a summary of all the modifications that we are going to make to configure RAID on the AMD board. So we select “ Create Array ” and it will be done. A new summary of the features will appear, and it will be the turn of pressing F10 to save the configuration and restart.

Install Windows in RAID with AMD board

We already have the RAID, so now we are going to take our flash drive with Windows 10 and we are going to proceed to install it in the RAID. We must also make sure that the drivers that we have just downloaded from the Asus page are accessible on this or another unit.

In case you do not know how to do it, we leave the article on creating bootable USB with Windows 10

After taking the necessary steps with the Windows installation wizard, we will arrive at the configuration and selection window for the unit where we want to install Windows. Previously we will have selected advanced installation as is normal in these cases. Here we will find a beautiful list of storage volumes where we see the main two and small partitions of 16 MB.

Under no circumstances are we going to eliminate these units that we see in the list or modify any type of partition that appears here. This occurs because we still do not have the drivers loaded so that the system understands that what we see here is a RAID.

So we are going to press the " Load driver " button and in the browser that appears we are going to look for the folder where we have the drivers. In it we will see a directory with the RAID controllers for NVMe and another one for SATA RAID.

In our case we are creating an NVMe RAID, so we access this folder. The first driver we will load is the " rcbottom " driver. Then click on " next " and wait for the driver to load.

The units issue will have improved to the point of seeing absolutely nothing in the selection window. Don't panic, click again on "load controller".

Now it's time to load the one from the “ rcraid ” folder, so we do the same operation to load this driver.

Now we really see our RAID correctly as a single unit as unallocated space with the 4 TB that add up between the two NVMe SSDs used.

We still have a controller to load, so we repeat the operation to load the one from " rccfg ". The latter will not produce changes, but it will be as important as the others.

To finish, click on Next and the installation process will begin in a normal way.

AMD RAIDXpert2 software for Windows

Let's say that this software is an extension of the one that is implemented in the BIOS to configure RAID on the AMD board, but with many more management options for our RAIDs from the operating system.

It should be said that this software is only compatible with Windows 10 x64 when the system is installed on a RAID volume. This means that in a normal installation the wizard will tell us that "the configuration of the operating system is not compatible".

From it we will see the units that make up the volume and we will be able to manage some of its parameters from the RAID as well as the disks individually. In addition, it allows us to create new volumes, for example with SATA drives connected to the other ports on the motherboard.

RAID 0 performance with NVMe Gen4 SSD

After seeing how to configure a RAID in AMD BIOS, you can see how far the performance of a RAID 0 like this can be increased. It should take advantage of the speed provided by each SSD individually to double the performance of reading and writing at best.

Configuration in RAID 0

SSD only

We see the benefits given by a single unit in CristalDiskMark and the one given by the RAID configuration, and it is simply double in all cases. With only two units we are reaching almost 10, 000 MB / s in sequential reading and almost 8, 500 MB / s in writing. In the same way, the performance in random processes also increases to twice its performance except the last test, the most demanding and that we see very little improvement.

Conclusion about configuring RAID on AMD board

So far this tutorial arrives where we believe we have explained in sufficient detail and pauses the procedure to create our own RAID.

Perhaps if you have an older motherboard and with AMD X370, B350 and A320 chipsets the configuration system changes. The idea will be the same, but it is true that the application is different and is installed independently of the BIOS. We will leave here a good ASRock guide that explains the procedure for these cases.

Now we leave you with some interesting and hardware related tutorials:

If you have had any problem with the RAID installation, just ask us in the comments. We will try to help in any way we can. Which one and what will you use a RAID for?