RAID 1 Gigabyte SATA Cannot find the array during Windows 7 install

WindowsStar · 12 Sep 2012

DeaconFrost said:

Buying a dedicated card should solve the issue, but like my advice previously, and what Golden suggested, there are better, cheaper ways to accomplish your goal. Don't close your mind to all solutions, because that's the primary way to miss a learning opportunity. We've all dealt with drive failures in the past, and it's extremely frustration...but a RAID1 setup is not the way to avoid them or their potential data loss. I can't stress it enough, that RAID on a desktop isn't worth the hassle, especially since it doesn't achieve your ultimate goal anyway. It's a fad that died out years ago. Golden and I are just making other suggestions based on our experience to help you better reach what you ultimately set out to do.

I deal with RAID everyday and this is NOT BACKUP as DeaconFrost has stated! RAID is ONLY for keeping data on-line 24 hours a day. You will still need some sort of backup system for all this to work correctly and avoid the issues with drives crashing. Plus I have seen RAID 1 with 2 drives bought at the same time fail within hours of each other, so if you don't have a drive ready (to swap) and you have to wait to order on on-line or go buy it locally you can have a total crash when they both fail.

Another point: RAID 1 on the desktop (workstation) is not fast and can even slow a system down especially if you are gaming, using AutoCAD, etc. I have seen it many times. RAID is really for servers where you need the data on line all the time.

You are much better off not using RAID and using imaging software HD to HD, HD to IMAGE, or backup software to backup the data. If you need a fast way to have your machine up and running imaging is the better and faster way. Just my 2 cents -WS

RKEdwizzle · 12 Sep 2012

DeaconFrost said:

Buying a dedicated card should solve the issue, but like my advice previously, and what Golden suggested, there are better, cheaper ways to accomplish your goal. Don't close your mind to all solutions, because that's the primary way to miss a learning opportunity. We've all dealt with drive failures in the past, and it's extremely frustration...but a RAID1 setup is not the way to avoid them or their potential data loss. I can't stress it enough, that RAID on a desktop isn't worth the hassle, especially since it doesn't achieve your ultimate goal anyway. It's a fad that died out years ago. Golden and I are just making other suggestions based on our experience to help you better reach what you ultimately set out to do.

Heya, yeah to be fair I may just have to bite the bullet on this one, however another thing I should not before I go ahead and just install OS on one HDD,

I tried to install a legit copy of vista today, and as per usual I go to locaqte the drivers, and it cannot find the RAID drivers for vista either... is this because they are on a USB and not a floppy drive,

A decent wWin7 RAID Controller is about £100 so I can't afford to buy that as well, beign a student and that lol,

I really do appreciate all your advice I just primarily wanted to make sure this was defo not going to happen before moving onto the next alternative :)

DeaconFrost · 13 Sep 2012

RKEdwizzle said:

I tried to install a legit copy of vista today, and as per usual I go to locaqte the drivers, and it cannot find the RAID drivers for vista either... is this because they are on a USB and not a floppy drive,

I don't remember with 100% accuracy, but I thought Vista could pull controller drivers from a USB flash drive. I vaguely remember that being one of the new features, where as XP could only pull from a floppy drive.