Setting Up Raid on MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX

[!TIMMY!]

I bought the following:

MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX (Bios 7C02v30)
Ryzen 3600
16gb Crucial 3200mhz DDR4
Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2

I installed them in my case and installed Windows 10 straight away. I wanted to install the OS and games on the Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2, then have my 2 existing Samsung 850 250GB SSD's in Raid 1 to store my pictures and videos I am editing (that are saved to my NAS once finished).

This may be a stupid question; I didn't change anything in the Bios before installing Windows and therefore left the Sata mode as AHCI. I now remember the last time I build a PC I had to change the mode to Raid before installing Windows. But I can boot into Windows fine after changing the Sata mode to Raid from AHCI, is this because the mode only applies to the Sata ports and not to the M.2 slot?

Secondly (again possibly another stupid question), after changing the Sata mode to Raid, how do I get into the menu's to create the Raid? The manual said press 'Ctrl +R' when the bios banner comes up when booting; I don't see anything when booting, just a black screen and then Windows loads. I tried repeatedly pressing Ctrl +R on boot up and ended up at a black screen with a cursor top left but it didn't do anything for a minute so I switched the PC off. I tried it again, repeatedly pressing Ctrl +R on boot up several times but it just kept loading Windows each time. Am I being an idiot?

 

[EsaT]

NVMe uses different drivers than SATA, so change of SATA mode from AHCI to RAID doesn't mess boot up of Windows.
NVMe RAID is again different setting in BIOS.

Page 95 covers UEFI RAID mode so you might want to try that.

Also when SATA mode is set to RAID you should be able to create array in Windows after installing RAID drivers and software tool.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-am4/b450

 

[Mugen7]

I bought the following:

Secondly (again possibly another stupid question), after changing the Sata mode to Raid, how do I get into the menu's to create the Raid? The manual said press 'Ctrl +R' when the bios banner comes up when booting; I don't see anything when booting, just a black screen and then Windows loads. I tried repeatedly pressing Ctrl +R on boot up and ended up at a black screen with a cursor top left but it didn't do anything for a minute so I switched the PC off. I tried it again, repeatedly pressing Ctrl +R on boot up several times but it just kept loading Windows each time. Am I being an idiot?

I have the same problem, with the same MB but I tried different bios without success. I can't enter RAID configuration pressing CTRL+R.

 

[!TIMMY!]

NVMe uses different drivers than SATA, so change of SATA mode from AHCI to RAID doesn't mess boot up of Windows.
NVMe RAID is again different setting in BIOS.

Page 95 covers UEFI RAID mode so you might want to try that.

Also when SATA mode is set to RAID you should be able to create array in Windows after installing RAID drivers and software tool.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/chipsets/amd-socket-am4/b450

Thanks for the clarification on the first question, that is a relief.

I tried to follow the instructions on page 95 and I did step 3:

3. Go to BIOS > SETTINGS > Advanced > Integrated Peripherals > SATA Mode and
change setting to RAID Mode.

But step 4 says:

4. Go to BIOS > SETTINGS > Advanced > Windows OS Configuration > Windows 10 WHQL Support and change setting to Enabled.

The only options I get under 'Windows OS Configuration' is to change the Bios mode from CSM to UEFI (it is default on CSM). Do I want to make that change?

I have the same problem, with the same MB but I tried different bios without success. I can't enter RAID configuration pressing CTRL+R.

I'm glad it wasn't just me being stupid.

 

[!TIMMY!]

I have sorted out the Raid! Here is what I did in case anyone else is in the same boat.

I updated to the latest Bios (that came out a couple of days ago). This didn't enable any of the menu's but was probably good to do.

I read up on UFEI / Bios and worked out that the mobo's default setting was to use the legacy bios (CSM setting). So I needed to change the setting to UEFI. As I had installed Windows 10 on the legacy bios the hard drive was configured with a MBR. I used the first part of this guide to convert the hard drive to GPT: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10?amp

Then in the UEFI I still didn't have the Windows 10 WHQL Support option so I skipped that step. The RaidXpert2 menu now appeared in the advanced options. So I went into that and the create array option was greyed out. It looked like the mobo had created 2 arrays, one for each of the hard drives I wanted to use in my Raid 1. So I deleted those 2 arrays which then allowed me to create a new Raid 1 array with both of the hard drives.

After booting back into Windows I installed the Raid drivers, rebooted and went into disk manager and created the new volume.

 

[jonww74]

I have sorted out the Raid! Here is what I did in case anyone else is in the same boat.

Thanks TIMMY, this worked for me as well, although I didn't need to convert the Windows (M2) drive. Cheers!

 

[!TIMMY!]

Thanks TIMMY, this worked for me as well, although I didn't need to convert the Windows (M2) drive. Cheers!

I'm glad it helped someone!