Bios flashing with Intel chipsets.

[omga14]

I have a Raid setup and was wondering if I was screwed into having to rebuild my array from scratch after flashing my bios. With the old Nvidia mobo's I just had to go back into the Bios and re-enable it. With the Intel I had to go through a process of selecting the hdd's to raid and then volume size.

This has me kinda confused as to wether I would just do the same here as with the old Nvidia chipset or if this volume selection is gonna screw me. I'm hoping I have the latest Bios, that way I can worry about it some other time.

[jdrom17]

I'm not sure because I haven't updated my BIOS since setting up my RAID. Guess I'll find out soon enough since I hear a new BIOS for my Maximus is in the works.

[AKHandyman]

I'm not sure because I haven't updated my BIOS since setting up my RAID. Guess I'll find out soon enough since I hear a new BIOS for my Maximus is in the works.
No, it won't screw it up ... I have had my RAID array on the X38 and went through two BIOS updates ... it never did anything to the Intel ROM on the MCH for the RAID controller ... I was worried about the same thing some time ago, but no worries there Omga ... ;)

[FrozenMercury]

Had a RAID array on a 965 chipset and a BIOS flash didn't affect it.

[Grimreaper]

Ive gone through at least 4 updates on my P35 and haven't had a bit of trouble. Just go back in and re-enable raid.

[omga14]

yep, just like the ole mobo. Just had to re-enable the raid and make it the first bootable drive. Good to have the latest bios.

[AKHandyman]

Expect to see some pics Omga ... or as Comixion would say, you don't have it! :D

[omga14]

ok, I'll post some in comp pics. I did post a pic of how i have the Zalman mounted on the hd3850. added a little heatsink and fan to the mosfets at the rear of the card too:D

[dark41]

Not only will the BIOS update not effect RAID, but a completely different motherboard and chipset won't effect the array either as long as it's the same RAID version (EG: ICHR9).

Now the OS itself is another story, but the array will be fine.

I keep my data on a RAID 0 array, XP Pro on a separate partition of that array, and Vista on a separate HD. I swapped from 965P motherboard to a P35 while trouble-shooting the 965P. I can't boot to XP obviously (wrong chipset drivers), so just reinstalled Vista to the separate HD (haven't activated Vista yet and probably never will) and fired right up. My data is still intact and so is the XP partition, just not bootable as is. :)

[AKHandyman]

That brings an interesting question ... I have a RAID 0 array on my DFI Infinity 975X/G board, which is using the ICH8R chipset ... The array (2 Seagate 250GB) has XP-32bit Pro and it's never been partitioned. Full size ... I would like to eventually move the array over to a newer mobo utilizing the ICH9R chipset, but I am afraid that that would screw up the array, which would mean I could not boot into to it ... I would have to have a single HD to boot from and then install the drivers for the ICH9R and then I could hook up my old array and then ensure that the Intel Matrix Storage software sees my old array, right? Then I could remove the single hard drive and because the old array was bootable, as long as in the BIOS, my boot options shows the Intel array, then I would be fine, right? I need another opinion as sometimes I outguess myself and being old and feeble at times, I don't want to screw this up ... any thoughts? ... :D

AK

[dark41]

I don't think it works that way.

If you hook up your ICH8R created array to a ICH9R, it'll either see it or it won't. It shouldn't change anything at that point as it's only reading, not writing anything to the array. So if the ICH9R doesn't see it, you should be able to hook it right back up to the ICH8R without a problem.

I think these arrays are backwards compatible, but I could be wrong. If it doesn't see the ICH8R array, I'm not sure if you can just install drivers for ICH9R. I'd think the array would have to be created again to work on the different RAID version.

As for booting into an array, it's the motherboard 975/965/p35/x38/etc. chipset drivers that'll create a BSOD upon booting, not the array itself. If you manage to clean off all the old drivers for the OS, you should be able to boot into the array without a problem. :)

[AKHandyman]

I believe that the ICH9R can read the old ICH8R, as I recall from the SATA driver floppy-disk that the two chipsets were together as an option for driver installation during the XP install ... "ICH8R/ICH9R SATA RAID Windows 32-bit" ... then there shouldn't be a problem booting into the existing OS on the array ... however, if it WON'T read it, I would be stuck with keeping the array on the old mobo until I am ready to re-do it ...I hate doing selective back-ups and saving files, deleting shyt, and so on ... sometimes more of a pain than anything else ... :curse:

Oh well, I am not at that point in time where it's a necessity that I do this, so I can still get by ... but thanks for the insight!

AK

[dark41]

ICH8R/ICH9R drivers are also the same on Gigabyte boards.

As long as you're going from a 975 chipset to another 975 chipset, you should be good to go. If it were data only the chipset wouldn't matter, but of course it does with the OS.

Anyway hope it works out for you. :)