THIS SHOULD BE A STICKY

>> You did not exactly follow the instructions per the other post in the forum I mentioned (that is the one from the guy in Italy), if you had you would have setup both RAID before installing OS and on install loaded the drivers for both SAS (assume did do this) and SATA. Vista would have picked both up properly and you would have been set.

>> but no biggie

>> here is the post with instructions

Topic : [Problem]SAS raid or ICH10R raid not both is a problem
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20081216042103721&board_id=1&model=P6T+Deluxe&SLanguage=en-us&page=2

Tetsujin
Posted:1/29/2009 6:59:00 AM # 12
 
After many hours, I found the solution.

Bios 1102

1) Select RAID in bios and create Raid on Intel controller (ctrl+I). Reboot and go to bios

2) Select AHCI and create Raid on SAS controller (ctrl+M). Reboot and go to bios

3) In boot device, select Raid SAS as first hard drive, then reboot

4) Install Vista: when requested, load the Marvell driver and the Intel driver. Now you can see the 2 sata became 1.. the sata raid is created.

5) At the end of the installation, go to Computer and you can see the Raid SAS + Raid Sata correctly configured.

Thanks to Hardware Upgrade Forum, Italy

>> This was the procedure I had use before and found his note. So I verified it again on a build - yes it works.
>> Note I have only tried this on Vista x64 and Win7 x64 and BIOS 1102 /1206, so that is all I can speak to...

>> Udo
>> Forget what ASUS support told you...
>> See instructions above from Tetsujin (and my notes to Duallydave below).
>> Not a big deal to switch back to SAS RAID, just set it up and clone your SATA image back over to it, verifiy it and then reconfigure your SATA (meaning format, etc., what ever you want).
>> Just be careful deleting RAID arrays, etc. and/or make sure you have some backups if you do not feel you know what you are doing...

>> Duallydave
>> Your problem is easy enough to resolve.
>> See my notes below.

I setup the SAS disks as raid1 and installed Vista x64. I ran windows update, install the chipset and sata drivers, all was working fine.

>> meaning you could see all disks - right?

I then plugged in the sata drives and set them up as a raid5 volume.
>> meaning you set BIOS to RAID and used Ctrl-I to make RAID - right?

When I exited and the system tried to boot, the SAS disks were not there and the system did not boot.
>> because you should have set BIOS to ACHI (from RAID) and BOOT to SAS
>> remember these steps required separate reboots and BIOS changes - you cannot change at the same time - one will override the other. anyway you can experiment if you like.

The boot section in the bios did not show the sata disks any more.
>> hmm. I think you were in some mis-step of the process of BIOS changes or something?
>> or did you mean the SAS drives? anyway does not mattter..

After changing the sata disks to achi, the sas disks showed up again in the boot section, and after setting them as the boot disk again, the system came back up, but the sata disks were not a raid set, but seperate disks.
>> Yes. That is correct. Because the BIOS reported them that way.
>> If you are unsure...go back again and verify your SATA RAID is configured in BIOS
>> Steps BIOS: RAID. Reboot, CTRL I, Reboot, BIOS: ICHI, Reboot, BIOS: SAS Primary Boot (note the name of your RAID array - this will appear later in Device Manager).

>> Ok if that is all good then...
>> Boot to Vista and run Intel Matrix Storage Manager (download most current if needed) my personal machine has 8.7.0.1007 (not sure if it latest).
>> Your SATA array will now be visible (I do not recall that a reboot is required - but possibly - if so I think Matrix Manager prompts after install - I do not remeber 100% at the moment).
>> Anyway you will see your RAID arrays in Device Manager (named as you did when you created).
>> Diskmgt (competer-Manage-Disk Management) will show the RAID as one drive (normal). Check the RAID and assign/check drive letter, etc.
>> Computer will show your RAID disk

>> What else can I help with?

Thanks to the above posts, I too was able to configure separate SAS and SATA RAID sets.  I was a bit confused at first, so if it's helpful to anybody I'll try and distill the important information:

You can create both SAS and SATA RAID sets, but due to BIOS memory limitations (or poor design) you cannot view both SAS and SATA BIOSes during boot.  So, the objective is to first set the P6T BIOS to "RAID" (which simply puts the ICH10R SATA controller in RAID mode), enter the ICH10R BIOS during boot by pressing CTRL-I, create your SATA RAID sets, save, reboot, then enter the P6T BIOS again and set to AHCI.  Now the ICH10R SATA RAID set is configured and tucked away so you can now edit the Marvell SAS RAID configuration (CTRL-M during boot).  That's it--not too complicated, just cumbersome!  These actions can be performed whenever the SATA RAID set needs to be reconfigured. 

In my case, I had 2 15k SAS drives in a RAID 1 array for my Vista x64 instance, and 5 1 TB SATA drives "spanned" in Vista (using the AHCI driver), just waiting until ASUS found a solution or somebody found a workaround.  Once the workaround was conceived I followed the workaround and created a RAID 5 array on the SATA drives (knowingly blowing away the data on the spanned array), and booted back into Vista to see if the workaround was effective.  Indeed it was.  The intel AHCI driver is the same iaStor.sys (8.7.0.1007) as before and under AHCI mode, the ICH10R accepted the RAID configuration I fed to it in the workaround.  The new RAID 5 set showed up in diskmgmt immediately and I'm back in action.