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I'm trying to set up a RAID 5 volume using 5 1TB Western Digital hard drives. They are all connected through an ASUS Sabertooth x58. I set the storage configuration in the BIOS to Raid and using the Intel Matrix Storage Manager successfully created a Raid 5 volume. I can see the created volume in the Windows 7 Ultimate Device Manage under hard drives but have no access to it. When I go back to the Intel Storage Manager after the Raid volume it says, "initialize" does this mean that it's still working on it or is there a step I'm still missing? FYI these are obviously being used strictly as storage with the OS installed on another drive.

does the raid posting give your drives listed in a raid array? also make sure they are all properly configured in the raid BIOS. I just checked my raid array out I did not see anything about an initialize, but when I entered the raid bios it states what drives are configured as well as what type of array I am using. delete the array, and rebuild it from scratch

a Raid 5 with 1 TB drives will take some time to initialize, not sure but having the initialize showing in the Intel Storage Manager is normal. you said you have no access to it in Device Manager. Did you right click on Computer and select manage and go to disk management to check the volume?

Also, i use Raid 5 in Servers but did you check that its supported in Win 7 Ultimate?

Darkstar wrote:a Raid 5 with 1 TB drives will take some time to initialize, not sure but having the initialize showing in the Intel Storage Manager is normal. you said you have no access to it in Device Manager. Did you right click on Computer and select manage and go to disk management to check the volume?

Also, i use Raid 5 in Servers but did you check that its supported in Win 7 Ultimate?

Thanks Darkstar! I was able to go in through disk management and format the array. From what I could find Windows 7 lacks native support for RAID 5 but you can still do it through a RAID controller.

I'd say don't bother...
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about32891.html

My results weren't what I was expecting. But if you need the redundancy then I'd just setup a RAID 1 with 4 drives.