Sig rig.
 
I was benching with 3DM11, overclocking the GPUs with Afterburner.
 
I obviously went a little too high, blackscreened, locked up, had to hard reset.
 
Watching the POST screen, two of the four drives are missing from my array.
 
OK, I CTRL-ALT-DEL and subsequently all four disks are listed again.
 
Boot into Windows, no nVIDIA driver present.
 
I have been using the 285.86, because the 290.xx disappear on reboot, just like what happened here.
 
I reinstall the driver, go into nVIDIA Control Panel, and there is no SLi option.
 
I reboot, check nVIDIA Control Panel again, and the SLi option is back.
 
So, my question to the gurus; what the hell is going on?
 
Is this a GPU problem, a motherboard problem, a driver problem, or what?

Driver issues to start with.
 
I would do a full driver clean and sweep in safe mode. then reinstall the latest non beta drivers and start from there. Make sure to reset your gpu to stock speeds.  After that then start working on your gpu overclock again. 
 
As for the disapearing - reapearing drives Its hard to say. You might want to keep an eye on them for now. Also what raid monitor are you using?

@Porpoise Hork,
 
Thanks for the reply.
 
Weird stuff with the latest drivers, to be sure.
 
Regarding the 'raid monitor'; what exactly does that mean?

The two I know of right off hand are Intel rapid storage technology or IRST and the older Intel matrix storage manager (IMSM).  They monitor your raid and alert you to potential issues in most cases before you have a drive fail. 

That is what I thought you meant, but I wanted to be sure.
 
I am using RST v. 11.0.0.1032.
 
No issues with RST at all.
 
When I first got this board, I had some issues with the RAID; losing drives, file corruption, but new SATA cables appeared to remedy that.
 
Now, the issues appear to have returned, I wonder if there might be something amiss with the motherboard?

I have noticed since the incident I described, my PC has begun to take longer to boot than it did previously.
 
It appears to 'hang' on the POST screen where the RAID configuration is shown.
 
I wonder if this is not a precursor to impending failure?
 
Which is more likely to be the cause:
 
1) Failling drive(s)
 
2) Failing controller
 
3) Corrupt BIOS
 
4) Other (please specify)

Since you are running ssd, I can't tell you what if anything you can to do diagnose the drive itself for problems.  It is pissoble that the controller is faulty, but its rare that this may be the case.
 
You can try a bios flash to see if it resolves the problem.  If not and all other attempts at fixing it do not work then RMA it.

Is it possible for a BIOS to become corrupted through normal use?
 
I hope it is not the motherboard controller.
 
Looking at the S.M.A.R.T. for the SSDs, which value would indicate failure?

I just finished a re-install, twice during restarts one drive was gone.
 
A quick CTRL-ALT-DEL and it was back, weird.

UPDATE:
 
I did a re-installation of Windows and my other applications today.
 
At least five times after a restart, the resolution was at 800x600, and both the GTX460s had Error 43 when viewed in Windows Device Manager, no nVIDIA Control Panel, and MSI Afterburner found 'no compatible devices'. Restarting appeared to temporarily remedy it.
 
Twice during POST drives disappeared from my RAID0 array; once three out of four were missing, and once one out of four were missing. Forcing a restart by CTRL-ALT-DEL during POST brought back the drives.
 
I know there are many quite intelligent and very experienced users in this forum, not the least of which are the various eVGA Tech Support team members who frequent the forum. I would liked to have believed someone would offer a possible explanation by now.