Why is option to create striped volume grayed out in disk management?
I bought an ASUS UX32VD notebook. In the BIOS the 256 GB SSD is configured to Drive 0 and Drive 1 each 128 GB. I wiped out all the factory partitions on initial clean install to get rid of ASUS bloatware. Bad move it seems. However since Drive    0  = OS(C:) showed 91.6 GB of which only 51.3 were free and Drive  1 = DATA (D:) 116 GB with 112 GB free I figured a clean install would give me a portion of the missing 55 GB back.  So my question is when I get to the section in the install process how do I partition drives so Win 8.1 will recognize the RAID. RAID is set in the BIOS as well. On this my 5th or 6th attempt I created 2 equal partitions. After windows created it's 300 MB and 100MB partitons Disk Management shows Disk 0 (C:) 119 MB  and Disk 1 (D:) 119 MB. Still no RAID I don't know that it is connected to the problem in Device Manager it shows Unknown Device     PCI Data Acquisition and Signal Processing Controller. After going into Hardware Ids and finding the ID a search finally got me to Intel and a driver Download. Installed the D/L and still not working. Any help or suggestions appreciated. Thanks Dan.
  • Edited by Anymouse65 Friday, December 20, 2013 12:08 PM
December 14th, 2013 8:32am

1.Read manual carefuly.

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/UX32A/E_eManual_UX32A_UX32VD_VER7457.pdf

You will find

DO NOT change the default RAID0 configuration settings.

2. If your target is RAID 1, use software RAID. Use standard procedure for creating RAID. (IMHO I do not see any special reason for building RAID1.)

Regards

Milos

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December 14th, 2013 4:07pm

Thanks for the look Milos. I have not changed the RAID settings. I really never saw that option i.e. as in 0 or 1. BIOS is different than Manual. I did have to change to IDE on one install when I had removed all partitions and system wouldn't boot to Windows at all. So as I said I removed the partition they said Do Not Remove. So the BIOS is showing 2 drives on one 256 GB SSD. It is also configured to RAID. What I want is a clean install on one of them and RAID 0 working.

Cheers, Dan



  • Edited by Anymouse65 Saturday, December 14, 2013 8:47 PM
December 14th, 2013 11:08pm

Firstly the hard drives are different sizes so you will only be able to use 128GB on each disk in RAID0.

Secondly if you are seeing a C and D drive after the installation of Windows you haven't created the RAID0 Array in the Intel RAID ROM (unless u created the partitions when installing windows).

A RAID0 array must be created before you start to install Windows on the array.

I would suggest using the 128GB as C for OS and Apps and then setup the 256GB as D for data.

Setting both drives to AHCI.

It's late here, so I'll try and offer some more assistance tomorrow if you need it.

Kind regards

Lloyd

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December 15th, 2013 2:29am

1. For those who are not owners of this type of computer it is not easy to go into details: What is physical drive and what is logical one. What are factory settings.

2. If there are two identical size  physical disks, then hardware RAID 0 creates double sized physical space, but increases risk of loss of data (functionality) if one physical disk is faulty. Higher speed versus reliability.

3. As Lloyd pointed I use AHCI for SSD disks. I do not fully understand why you used IDE.

4. If I "refuse" factory settings, I would use one physical disk for operating system (smaller or equal size as second disk) and second (equal or larger size as first disk) for data. For full backup I would use external drive and SkyDrive for data.

5. For Asus specific question I would address Asus support/forum. People may had solved similar problem before you have.

Regards

Milos


December 15th, 2013 12:38pm

Thanks for the replies guys. From your post it appears my initial post is confusing. The 256 GB SSD is configured from the factory in the BIOS as (2) 128 GB Drives - 0 & 1. I don't know that I can change that nor want to. The sizes in Windows - This PC - from the factory were;

OS (C:) 91.6 GB

DATA (D:) 116 GB

This indicated to me ASUS had some hidden partitions on C: I wanted to clean of bloatware and just run Windows and the programs I installed. After formating this last install the Drives show;

Local Disk (C:) 118 GB

Local Disk (D:) 119 GB

I appreciate losing some of disk space to indexing so I'm fine with the size now.

In Disk Management it shows


Disk 0 Basic 119.12 GB Online


300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition)

100 MB Healthy (EFI System  Partition)

(C:) 118.73 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump Primary Partition


Disk 1 Basic 119.12 GB Online


(D:) 119.12 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)

So where did I go wrong on the Create Partitions page of the install? Next install elimiate all partitions again, fomat both drives and then force Windows to recreate the 300 MB and 100 MB partitions? As it stands now Drive (D:) shows 1 GB used but when I open it - Show Hidden files - it says it is empty. Is RAID 0 being used?

Again appreciate your efforts and time.

Regards, Dan

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December 16th, 2013 7:03am

On previous installs had formatted D: drive. Saw YouTube vid that to create Win wanted unallocated drive. Ergo re-installed again. Option "Create Stripped Volume" is greyed out when I right click on drive. Any ideas? This is getting a bit annoying.

Dan

  • Edited by Anymouse65 Friday, December 20, 2013 9:17 AM
December 20th, 2013 12:16pm

Problem Solved. RMA'ed sys. back to Newegg. Finally realized this was not Windows issue but somehow in the 50 GBs of partitions I deleted ASUS had convinced the MoBo there were 2 SSD drives connected. Purchased new laptop from Puget Systems and support is primo.

Saw a lot of post re doing a clean install and since I had been forced by ASUS - no Win 8 Key Code on system and they woud not give me one - to buy Win 8.1. Ergo I ordered new system from Puget w/o OS. Tech support advised before system was shipped on how to do clean install from flash drive;

D/L Drivers from their site when system arrived as they would more up to date than what would be on Drivers/Utilities disk that would ship w/ system as Tech Dept checked daily for updates.

When Windows begins install;

Choose Custom Install.

Uncheck Let Windows load drivers.

When OS is installed

Go into add/remove features and enable .NET Framework 3.5.

Restart

Then load Drivers.

This is by far the cleanest, best running Windows version I ever had on a system and have been installing since Win 95 A.

Hope this helps some of those who are having Clean Install issues.

Anymouse



  • Edited by Anymouse65 10 hours 17 minutes ago grammar
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January 13th, 2014 8:29pm

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