OS Partition NVME RAID + Bitlocker and Secure Boot on ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

Hi all,

I am currently toying with the idea of purchasing either 1 2TB or 2x 1 TB NMVe drives for my ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero + 5950x setup. Before making a decision, I am trying to figure out if a setup as follows is at all possible in the 2x 1 TB case:

- One 250 GB RAID1 partition (which would take away 250 GB space on each drive) as drive C used for OS (Windows 10 x64) to provide redundancy.
- One ~750 GB partition (remaining space per drive) on each drive without any RAID, configured as drives D and E, for other data.
- Bitlocker-based encryption on the OS driver with Secure Boot enabled in UEFI mode.

It seems there are multiple limitation in using AMD's hardware RAID in UEFI mode and/or with Secure Boot enabled, so I am not sure if the above configuration is even possible. Moreover, I am not sure if AMD's hardware RAID is capable of implementing RAID on a subset of a disk's space, rather than the whole disk. If anyone has experience with such setup, or AMD hardware RAID in general, I would appreciate your feedback.

 

No, as you setup drives into raid sets, not partitions.
Running Secure Boot and RAID of any kind is possible.

 

Correct! You cannot RAID partitioned drives. When in RAID 0 mode, it will take the WHOLE DRIVES and combine both of them. Applies to all HDD, SSD, and NVMe.

 

If it is RAID 0 it will be useless with NVMe drive, because your computer will not get benefit from it as software RAID, only hardware will do (but controler is expensive, but once you tried, you can't go back), also NVMe doesn't like being in agregated raid (RAID 0)
If it is in miror RAID then it make more sense, but you will pay expensive 2x1To raid to gain nothing exept security and have 1To.
So i would said that both are not so nice.

Other idea:
-Get a fast NVMe PCIe 4.0 for OS, put 2 HDD in raid and cache the raid with an average NVMe, StoreMi 2 might do it, despite i don't like it.
There is many other software that can do it too.
-Get a fast NVMe TLC PCIe 4.0 for OS, and a QLC big volume one (sata or NVMe PCIe) for data. The most simple and cheap i think
-If you have money think about the hardware controler, faster, more versatile... but really more expensive (also most are in U2 SAS)

 

not necessarily, with a storage spaces 2 column config you get the capacity increase as well as well as sequential multithreaded read/write benefits

 

But he have a X570 with the basic AMD RAID, it's not a "real" controler, one M2 from the CPU and the second M2 from the X570 and add the CPU <=> X570 connection on the picture...
Single M2 or 2 in raid would lead almost the same result (i have tried myself, then i put back my LSI) .

 

i'd keep both on the x570, it has enough lanes.

 

If it was so easy...
Sadly AMD haven't done it this way. (to remember 24 lane from CPU in 16+4+4 and 16 from X570 in 8+4+4 to optain the 40 lanes)
Asrock and Gigabite do it by re assigning GPU lane or PCIe lane to it as an exemple.
directely to a M2 or to a RAID controler.
To have both on same side you limit something
On other hand the RAID on those board is mainly for entusiastic home use (it explain a lot of the trick).

 

bifurb cards are cheap and all x570 support it