Custom Upgrade - Advanced options greyed out

[foghat]

Hi all,

I have 2 hard drives in a Raid 0 configuration. On this configuration, I have 2 partitions, C and D. C currently has Vista on it.

booted from win 7 64bit disk. Select Custom. Select advanced options and highlight the C partition. All of the advanced options are greyed out (format, delete, etc).

If I select the D partition, all the advance options are available, but obviously I don't want to install to the D drive.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why the options are greyed out on my C partition? could it have to do with the Raid 0? It came from Dell like this.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello foghat,

Try following the instructions in this post for how to mark a partition as active.

Now, what is on the C partition?

 

[foghat]

The partition must be active. It is where my current operating system (vista) is installed and running from.....Win 7 identifies it as a system partition vs. primary.

In your link it says to make sure it the partition is primary, but doesn't state how to do this. Only how to make active.

 

[Jonathan_King]

What advanced options do you need to change?

 

[foghat]

I want to format it.

When I look on Computer management -> Disk management in Vista, it show my C partition as: Status Healthy (System, Boot, Page file, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).

Not sure what is going on here.

 

[Ztruker]

I have no experience with installing Windows 7 on a RAID setup, but Google returns a lot of hits so it seems not unusual to have problems. Most indicate the need to install a RAID driver.

See here: install windows 7 raid 0

 

[Jonathan_King]

If you want to format the drive, you can do it from Diskpart. Open Diskpart, and select the correct partition as shown in my link above. Then type format fs=ntfs. Add a quick onto the end of that command if you want to do a quick format, or else leave it off for a full format.

Hope this helps,
~Jonathan

 

[foghat]

Getting a little confused, can diskpart be run from the win 7 boot screen? Surely I can't (nor would I want to) format my c partition will I am in Vista.

To Ztruker, everything I saw on your link had to do with the actual install not working. If I let it, Win7 will start the install without a format. I just want to format first before attempting the install.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Diskpart cannot be run from the install screen, but it can be run from the Installation DVD. See my link above.

 

[foghat]

gotcha. Thanks. Hopefully it will work.

 

[iseeuu]

Hi all,

I have 2 hard drives in a Raid 0 configuration. On this configuration, I have 2 partitions, C and D. C currently has Vista on it.

booted from win 7 64bit disk. Select Custom. Select advanced options and highlight the C partition. All of the advanced options are greyed out (format, delete, etc).

If I select the D partition, all the advance options are available, but obviously I don't want to install to the D drive.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why the options are greyed out on my C partition? could it have to do with the Raid 0? It came from Dell like this.

I cannot help but wonder WHY Dell is shipping computers with RAID configured?!?!

Even with two hard drives, configured as RAID 0, the Dell web site says this:

"RAID 0 offers little protection for data because there is no redundancy (duplication) of the data, so if one drive fails the entire array will stop working." See the link for the rest of the RAID information from Dell.

You MUST use the provided RAID configuration software to modify a raid hard drive array, it can not be done with Windows Disk Management. If the RAID is part of the motherboard chipset, the BIOS must be set to enable the RAID, and to disable it.

I suggest you contact Dell Support to find out how they recommend saving your hard drive contents, disabling the RAID 0, and restoring to an non-raid hard drive.

Cheers!
Robert

 

[foghat]

well, it is hardware raid 0. Motherboard. this is an xps system, they ship it this way for increased hard drive performance.

I do have my stuff backed up, so I could remove the raid 0 and start from scratch. I'd rather not though as I lose the increased performance and am stuck with 2 - 320gig drive instead of a 640gig drive partitioned as 400 (d and 178 (c

 

[iseeuu]

well, it is hardware raid 0. Motherboard. this is an xps system, they ship it this way for increased hard drive performance.

I do have my stuff backed up, so I could remove the raid 0 and start from scratch. I'd rather not though as I lose the increased performance and am stuck with 2 - 320gig drive instead of a 640gig drive partitioned as 400 (d and 178 (c

If it is your choice to keep the raid, then I would suggest to you to go to the Dell support site and find out how Dell says to upgrade your OS on your raid array?

Cheers!
Robert

 

[Shadow2359]

Solved

For anyone else having the issue related to the advanced drive options not showing up when installing vista or windows 7 then you can try 1 of 2 things which have solved them for me when I encountered this problem twice on two different machines....

1) go into the bios and set the date and time

2) try a different product key (yea.. lame but it actually worked)

 

[gregrocker]

I've only known it to happen when the installer is not really booted but running from the OS.

 

[Shadow2359]

We only do clean installs on our shop, so the two times it happened to me was with the disc iso after the drive was erased.