ZoranC
Was it technologically best? Yes, no debate there. But discontinuing IMHO does matter. Discontinued products die off. Driver might be supported now but there is no guarantee it will exist and continue being supported with next releases of operating systems. Not being able to use something anymore down the road does matter, especially at such an astronomical price. Betamax was technologically best yet it ended up very expensive brick down the road after discontinuing.

The SSD will continue to work even without Intel’s software. You can use it with any other caching software in the future including Storage Spaces. You will always have the problem of permanent data loss on crash with any other SSD.

Monstieur
The SSD will continue to work even without Intel’s software. You can use it with any other caching software in the future including Storage Spaces. You will always have the problem of permanent data loss on crash with any other SSD.

OK I installed the new board and got 2 VROC arrays showing in the BIOS and in Windows. They are on separate VMD's and I cloned Windows over to one of them but the BIOS won't let me select it as a boot drive even though it shows as bootable in the VROC screen. I also have the Intel key installed. Does secure boot or fast boot need to be enabled for it to be bootable? Once I solve this last issue I will just enjoy it as is but I don't think it would need it as VROC supported Win7 when it was released.

JK_DC

Monstieur
The SSD will continue to work even without Intel’s software. You can use it with any other caching software in the future including Storage Spaces. You will always have the problem of permanent data loss on crash with any other SSD.

OK I installed the new board and got 2 VROC arrays showing in the BIOS and in Windows. I cloned Windows over but the BIOS won't let me select it as a boot drive even though it shows as bootable in the VROC screen. I also have the Intel key installed. Does secure boot or fast boot need to be enabled for it to be bootable? Once I solve this last issue I will just enjoy it as is but I don't think it would need it as VROC supported Win7 when it was released.

If you clone Windows to a different device you may have to manually fix the boot entry in UEFI for it to show up in the boot menu. Once you fix the boot entry, it will still fail to boot from VROC until you boot in safe mode at least once to associate the VROC driver with the boot device. So you have to add a a new bcdedit entry with safeboot as well.
 
https://community.spicewo...ly-to-get-into-windows

Monstieur

JK_DC

Monstieur
The SSD will continue to work even without Intel’s software. You can use it with any other caching software in the future including Storage Spaces. You will always have the problem of permanent data loss on crash with any other SSD.

OK I installed the new board and got 2 VROC arrays showing in the BIOS and in Windows. I cloned Windows over but the BIOS won't let me select it as a boot drive even though it shows as bootable in the VROC screen. I also have the Intel key installed. Does secure boot or fast boot need to be enabled for it to be bootable? Once I solve this last issue I will just enjoy it as is but I don't think it would need it as VROC supported Win7 when it was released.

If you clone Windows to a different device you may have to manually fix the boot entry in UEFI for it to show up in the boot menu. Once you fix the boot entry, it will still fail to boot from VROC until you boot in safe mode at least once to associate the VROC driver with the boot device. So you have to add a a new bcdedit entry with safeboot as well.
 
https://community.spicewo...ly-to-get-into-windows

I got it working now. I had to convert Win 7 to UEFI. I had storage on UEFI in CSM but it needed EFI boot to work. There were a few good guides on how to do it without losing any data. The issue with the Dark was the PCIE4 slot won't work with VROC. Since that slot didn't work with SLI either when I tried it in 2020 makes me believe the slot isn't functioning correctly and RST only allows 2 drives which isn't enough. I could have done 4 with drive manager in windows though. I can have 7 drives with VROC in different arrays with this Prime Deluxe I got and still have 2 M2 drives for data or backup. Thanks for your help.

Hi all,

I picked up a couple of 1TB Intel 670p SSDs on black friday and also a asus hyper m.2 v2 card.

I have a evga x299 micro and got vroc running.

The speeds seem a bit low to me. Is this about right for what I should get from 2x 670p in RAID0?

Also I have no vroc key (idk if this mb even has a header for it) but the array says bootable. Could I add 2 more 670p and keep in RAID0 or I need a key for that?

https://i.ibb.co/RYC8MWn/...19-A6-B4-BF70-B979.jpg

ssj92
Hi all,

I picked up a couple of 1TB Intel 670p SSDs on black friday and also a asus hyper m.2 v2 card.

I have a evga x299 micro and got vroc running.

The speeds seem a bit low to me. Is this about right for what I should get from 2x 670p in RAID0?

Also I have no vroc key (idk if this mb even has a header for it) but the array says bootable. Could I add 2 more 670p and keep in RAID0 or I need a key for that?

https://i.ibb.co/RYC8MWn/...19-A6-B4-BF70-B979.jpg

The performance seems lower than it should be for the 670p. However they are QLC drives and the performance may not hold up with huge sequential writes. Try different stripe sizes when creating the RAID0. 64 KiB gives maximum performance for NVMe RAID0 IIRC.
 
As long as they are Intel drives you can boot from RAID0 without a key. You can add 2 more drives if you wish. I would just buy a cheap Optane 900p 280 GB from eBay and use that as a boot drive.

Monstieur

JK_DC
The big question is why it won't boot in PE4 with VROC enabled, but it will boot with non-VROC enabled? Both are bifurcated.

Try removing all but one drive from the Hyper M.2 card and test by adding them back in one by one. It seems like the VROC UEFI module has a problem with the drives. I have manually updated the VROC UEFI modules in my BIOS using the UEFI BIOS Updater (UBU) tool. The version that comes with the X299 DARK is very outdated.
 

JK_DC
The other interesting thing is I can create a raid in the rst page in bios on pe4, but only if computer attached storage is on. I believe you said rst doesn't work on pe4?

Strange, as it does not work for me. I can create RST RAID only on PE6 / PM2 / PU2, but not with my Hyper M.2 card in PE4. The drives in PE4 are not detected in RST even with CPU Attached Storage enabled. However both bifurcation and VROC work fine on PE4.
 
If it works for you then I recommend just creating RST RAID0 with CPU Attached Storage enabled. VROC RAID0 is unstable with non-Intel drives and is no longer recommended by Intel on X299 even for previously supported configurations. The RAID0 performance is identical between RST and VROC. The arrays are even compatible with each other so you can swap between them without losing data.

currently trying to do something similar and it's a bit of a learning curve for me. would you care to share your modified bios or provide any more details on how you modded it? Thanks!

btifft
currently trying to do something similar and it's a bit of a learning curve for me. would you care to share your modified bios or provide any more details on how you modded it? Thanks!

I don't have the board anymore. Download the UBU tool and the various VROC / RSTe UEFI modules which were available on the WinRAID forums. Put them in the appropriate folders after extracting UBU and it should allow you to update the BIOS modules. You can update multiple modules including network, SATA, etc. There is an old method and new method in UBU for updating some modules. The old method requires a specific version of MMTool. The new method does not require any tools but in earlier versions of UBU the BIOS would not boot.

Update:  I was able to upgrade VROC to 7.8 on bios and installed a key, however it is still reporting the drives as incompatible. If anyone needs help updating bios modules, there is good information on winraid forums. I'm also able to help now that I worked through all of it.
 

Monstieur

btifft
currently trying to do something similar and it's a bit of a learning curve for me. would you care to share your modified bios or provide any more details on how you modded it? Thanks!

I don't have the board anymore. Download the UBU tool and the various VROC / RSTe UEFI modules which were available on the WinRAID forums. Put them in the appropriate folders after extracting UBU and it should allow you to update the BIOS modules. You can update multiple modules including network, SATA, etc. There is an old method and new method in UBU for updating some modules. The old method requires a specific version of MMTool. The new method does not require any tools but in earlier versions of UBU the BIOS would not boot.

 
Do you recall which version of VROC/RSTE you upgraded to and what your bios settings were? I'm determined to make this work!

I used the 7.0.x RSTE module at the time. You might be able to boot with Intel drives in RAID0 with a VROC standard key if the UEFI shows them compatible. The VROC keys do not work for non-Intel drives on X299 unlike server platforms regardless of what the documentation says, and the premium key probably doesn't work even for Intel drives in RAID5 AFAIK. If you create a RAID array in Windows using the VROC software, it stores the 30-day trial key in the registry. You can also use CPU attached RAID in UEFI to create a RAID array using the Intel Memory and Storage software (not VROC). You can then switch the drives back to VROC and the RAID array will be recognized by VROC.