HP BIOS SATA RAID with m.2 SSD system drive?

[AaronSmiley]

Hello, I'm trying to set up my HP EliteDesk 800 G3 to run a couple 2.5" SSDs in RAID 0 for speed and capacity, but I'd also like to use the 256gb m.2 SSD for my system.  I've updated my BIOS from 2.6 to 2.15, but for some reason whenever I enable RAID it seems to be treating my m.2 drive as Optane memory. 

Is there a way to enable RAID in the BIOS without losing the use of the m.2 drive?

Thank you for any help or advice you can lend,

Aaron

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

BIOS update 2.6 doesn't exist for your PC so updating to 2.6 is not possible.

Unless you have an Optane ready motherboard, Optane ready BIOS, Optane M.2 SSD and install the Intel special Optane application then your PC is not in Optane mode. You must be mistaken as Optane operation requires an Intel Optane m.2 SSD and the special Optane application; none of which you have posted information about installing.

[Bios-Analytical]

Hi Aaron, 

I'm not sure he's completely grasped the context of your issue... if I'm right then you're having much the same problem as me...

I want two SATA HDD's in raid (in your case SSD's) but also want to be able to use the NVME in the M.2 socket as a boot/system drive.

I can't figure it out either - If I select Raid from the bios I can't see the NVMe, if I deselect the RAID in bios I can see the NVMe but can't use the two HDD's in raid.

I can't disable the OPTANE checkbox and select RAID from bios without it reselecting then greying out the OPTANE checkbox - and I'm not using OPTANE I'm using a Samsung 256GB NVMe drive (taken from a HP Turbo Z mk2 PCIe card)

I haven't checked to see if I can use the Turbo-Z drive in it's PCIe card and tried to enable raid as I haven't got a half height bracket for it, but if I can find one I'll post the results back here.

I've not found a fix for this yet other than using a 3rd party raid card, which seems like a bit of an extravagance.

I'll keep looking and if I find something out will post back here, in the meantime if you find a solution please share!

Maybe an "expert" might have a suggestion that doesn't include using Intel Optane?

[AaronSmiley]

Thank you very much for flushing out the details of the issue I was referring to.  And yes, I think you're right, he didn't quite grasp the issue but then again I was unfortunately vague.  I should have mentioned that it didn't matter which version of the BIOS I used, the behvaior was consistent.  I only updated in an effort to fix it.

I think you're on to something using a card to get this done, but it's a shame it's not built into the BIOS.  Mostly because I don't have a card option 😛

Let me know if you have any luck with the card.  I have an indirect line to an HP engineer, and I will send the question to them and let you know how that goes.

Aaron

[AaronSmiley]

I heard back from the Kevin the Engineer (representing New England), and it sounds like if the M.2 is NVMe, then it will be treated as Optane.  He made a distinction, though... it sounds like if the M.2 is not NVMe, then it might work.

I would say using a card to "disassociate" it from the BIOS may be the only way to victory, and depending on how smart the UEFI BIOS is, that still may not work.

One thing he was kind enough to point out was that I was chasing a pipe dream hoping to get better I/O speeds by striping the SSDs.  Even with this BIOS it's still a software RAID, and the only benefit of software RAID 0 is a larger volume.  At that rate, I'm better off just doing it with Windows Disk Managment.

Best of luck on your end,

Aaron

[Big_Dave]

@AaronSmiley

You need to have a very flexible BIOS in order to enable onboard hardware RAID and at the same time use ACHI mode for the NVMe m.2 SSD.You might be able to do both by using an add in RAID card or by having a enthusiast level motherboard.

I have stripped two m.2 SSDs and the I/O speeds are better than just using one m.2 NVMe SSD.  But then of course you need a motherboard that supports dual m.2 NVMe SSDs running in RAID mode.