I'm using an HP ENVY h8-1414 Desktop PC.
I pulled the original 1TB disk and inserted a pair of identical 500GB disks. (With the intention being to buy an additional 1TB disk for production use.) I ran the system restore using the media I created just after first-boot. So I have the Windows 8 OS the drivers, etc. all installed on the first 500GB drive plugged in to SATA 5 on the board and an identical disk plugged in to SATA 6.
I want to now configure the second drive for RAID 1 mirroring and according to the documentation I should be able to do that through the AMD RAIDXpert software. According to what I've read, the disk that has the OS installed should already be a "RAID Ready" disk in the software however it is not.
When I try to configure a disk it only gives me an option to make the spare disk (SATA 6) RAID Ready. I never get any options that allow me to add SATA 5 to any array.
That being said, here are the steps that I have performed to troubleshoot this issue.
-- Full System Restore (start over...done 3 or 4 times now.)
-- Read every peice of documentation I can find. (Namely http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01827420&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en)
-- Verified that the BIOS is set for RAID (as opposed to AHCI or IDE)
-- Installed the lastest available RAID controller drivers (13-4_vista_win7_win8_32-64_raid.exe)
User experience:
--When I go into Xpert, I only get the option to make a disk "RAID Ready". It's like the Xpert doesn't can't do anything with the disk that the OS is running on. It sees the disk in physical devices, so it has some awareness of it, but I can't create a RAID 1, I can't migrate to it (grayed out), I'm just sort of stuck there.
All of this points me in the direction of one (or more) of the following being an issue:
1.) Defective RAID controller
2.) Incompatibility with RAID controller and GPT disks
3.) UEFI settings not allowing the system to enable the other utilities that may be needed to congfigure a raid array.
------ It's worth noting that I do not get any messages along the lines of "Press <CTRL+E> to configure storage." during post. Additionally, I'll freely admit that I don't know as much as I could about GPT disks and how they behave differently from MBR disks and I know next to nothing about UEFI.
4.) The former contents of the disk in SATA 6 (spare) are preventing the OS from recognizing it as being useable. (I think I pulled it from a VMWare server that I was running at one point.)
5.) Despite all indications to the contrary, there is no RAID functionality in this box. (Which would be odd to the point of infuriating considering that there is a BIOS setting for it and the drivers/Xpert came pre-installed.)
Steps yet to try:
DBAN both disks so that they are all zeros, and then start from scratch with a system restore.
As an aside, I've configured a number of RAID array's in my day and this is the first time I've ever come across one where I legitimately don't know what my next steps are. Please feel free to talk technically in your responses, I'm a systems engineer by trade, I promise I can keep up.
My PC is under warranty until 11/29/2013. Additionally, I did chat in to HP support about this and after feeding me docs I had already seen, and a driver package that I already had, they referred me to pay support (Smart buddy?) and I'm having none of that. This should either work, or someone should be able to tell me enough about their own product to tell me why it won't ever work. I'm not going to pay money to have someone tell me that it won't work.
As always, your time and efforts are appreciated.
--Chip Sharp