Still can't install RAID 0 drivers

Lou56 · 04 Jan 2010

I've read several forum threads on this, but am still having trouble. I have win 7 32bit RC up and running for a long time on a 500 gig WD. Bought two 1Ts for a raid 0. I have the RAID chosen correctly in the BIOS, and the utility works fine. At the clean install for either 64 or 32 bit, I try to choose the drivers which I have downloaded from Intel and Asus, and tried to use the Vista drivers off my P5Q install disk, and still, Win 7 does not recognize the drive. I have been home building and using computers for the past 25 years and I guess technology has gotten way over my hobbiest head. I have tried the USB flash drive route and I doesn't work either. Please, I know of the F8 workaround for unsigned drivers, but that doesn't work either. So, how are people raiding Win 7 at clean install? Second question, is there a good tutorial at technet.com (which I can't find there) or someother place that tells step by step how to raid under disk manager in win 7? Thanks for your time. I know this question is redundant.

pbcopter · 04 Jan 2010

If you are using an Intel controller, ICH10R, etc. then no extra drivers are needed nor will work during install of Windows 7. Windows 7 contains those drivers natively.

ccatlett1984 · 04 Jan 2010

have you created the raid volume?

Lou56 · 04 Jan 2010

yes, I have. It shows clearly when I boot up. I am misunderstanding I guess because it is so simple. As in other installs, I don't need to go to the drivers icon? All I have to do is go to "new," set the allocation so that it now shows 100mb reserved and then the "remainder." Then hit continue? Thank you for helping out. I have read several threads in several forums and I don't think that was ever said.

pbcopter · 05 Jan 2010

Yes you are correct, that is all you need to do. Good luck.

Vintage · 19 Apr 2010

just wanted to know why if i have the store bought upgrade , I can install 32 bit version no problem , but when I run the 64 bit clean install it never gets past the allocating partitions , first it was a raid problem found the driver , it recognised the driver but then said it couldnt find them(the drive was in the box) , but wouldnt let me do anything, then I could mes with the partitions box all i wanted but couldnt pass that section , the guy before said something about 100 mb then extend , this is all i have to do? the raid setup utilty setup my raid at 0 no problem , works fine in vista 32 and win 7 32 , but not win 7 64 !

Also on the upgrade disk , if I actually upgrade vista 32 to win 7 32 , no problem activating, but since win 7 isnt technically an upgrade (clean install) will I be able to activate it?

mpcrsc562 · 19 Apr 2010

Intel forums, don't know if you've seen this... Hope it helps answer some questions.
Does the ICH10R support RAID capacity...

Lou56 said:

Bought two 1Ts for a raid 0.

Quote from Mike on Intel Forum:

Re: Does the ICH10R support RAID capacity expansion?
The 2TB limit doesn't come from the RAID stack or driver. It's actually a limitation of the way a hard drive's partition table is set up. MBR (Master Boot Record) is a standard way of defining partitions on a disk. It's been around for a long time. It has a limitation that it can only address up to 2TB of disk space. Therefore, MBR can not be used on disks/ volumes that are larger than 2TB.

If the RAID driver did allow an expansion of an MBR volume to greater than 2TB, in the best scenario you would be limited to 2TB of space, but in some scenarios the OS will fail to recognize the volume altogether.

The Intel Matrix Storage Manager does support creating volumes greater than 2TB. Note that not all OROMs support this, but you should still be able to create such a volume in the Windows UI even if it's not supported by the OROM. After creating the volume, you need to use Windows Disk Manager to initialize the disk using GPT (GUID Partition Table) which, unlike MBR, does support more than 2TB volumes.

Something to be aware of, however, is that on many OSs, volumes that have been configured as GPT cannot be used as boot volumes-- you would need to boot of a different disk/ volume.

Also, this quote from Perplexer on Intel forums:

Now to my story:
Currently as I write this, the newest version of Intel Matrix Storage Manager software and drivers is 8.?9.?0.?1023 (release date 7/17/2009). And this is what I have found out doing tests on my computer (Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM 8.0.0.1038):

I have built me a new PC with an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard with X58 chipset and ICH10R southbridge. I put in four 1TB SATA drives and used them to create a RAID array with two RAID-5 volumes (I did that in Intel Matrix Storage Manager option "BIOS" ("IMSM BIOS")). The available capacity was therefore around 3TB. I had to create two volumes because I couldn't use one big 3TB volume since Windows cannot be installed on it. So I created one 50 GB volume and the second volume took the rest of the available space (you can't change that - second volume always takes ALL the remaining space).

I then booted from the Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit install DVD and the setup program detected my two RAID volumes as Disk0 (50 GB) and Disk1 (2744 GB). I didn't have to load any special RAID drivers so that was nice. Windows 7 could only be installed on Disk0 so I selected that and installed the OS (the setup partitioned it automatically). Once inside Win7 I installed the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software and checked my RAID configuration. It looked ok. I then went and initialized the other volume (Disk1) in Disk Management. I had 2 options: MBR and GPT. If I selected GPT, the drive was initialized and I had 2.7 TB of Unallocated space ready to be partitioned as one or multiple partitions. But if I selected MBR, then the disk got split into two parts of Unallocated space, one of size 2048 GB and the other 696 GB. So I could then create one or more partition in the "left" Unallocated space and one or more partitions in the "right" Unallocated space. The difference is that I could not have one single 2.7 GB partition like on a GPT initialized disk. And don't be fooled, even though I did initialize this disk as MBR and created multiple partitions smaller than 2 TB on it (even set active), I could NOT install windows on the partition on this drive. This is because the disk itself (the volume created the RAID array) is larger than 2 TB. You can use such a disk (volume) in Windows but you can't boot from it on a regular PC with a regular BIOS.

Vintage · 19 Apr 2010

mpcrsc562 your specs say you have the phenom II 940 and a similiar setup as mine, you didnt have any problems setting up 64 ? do i need a regular full install copy or the upgrade will work ? im thinking the upgrade is just that an upgrade , 32 -32 and 64-64 (vista-win 7) , but not vista 32 to win7 64, right? at any rate I cant get it to work just yet (in 64)

probably need to get a full install for 64?

seems it should be easier , but Vista loads fast and win takes forever to load
who knows, I want to be able utilize my ram and the full potential of 64

mpcrsc562 · 19 Apr 2010

@Vintage: No, I didn't have any problem with installing Windows to the RAID array. Got the RAID driver from Gigabyte's website, unzipped onto USB drive, booted into BIOS set and setup the array, then installed Windows. I have the retail full version. Although, there are tutorials within this forum to show you how to do a clean install with upgrade version.

Installation tutorials: Tutorials - Windows 7 Forums

How to Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version: Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version