[Child_OD]

Hey Oc'ers,
I recently was at frys helping a friend get some stereo components, and so natrually by the time I left i had spent $180 on two 500Gb Hitachi Deskstar drives* and a SIIG RAID Card
. So I popped my raid card into a PCI-e 1x slot, plugged in my two drives, and since i already had a drive the computer with windows on it, i started it up and installed the drivers and management software included on the disk. Initially i just setup a typical RAID 0 array, and started creating partition. (though it would only let me quick format the partitions for some reason).

So with my partitions made and formatted I proceeded to restart and boot to my windows disk in an attempt to install it on one of my newly made partitions, unfortunately though when i went to the screen were you select which partition i want to put windows on my raid array didn't even show up as a disk on the list.

After some poking around on the management program i found a legacy support setting which appeared to be necessary to make the array bootable.
So i enabled that and converted my array to a "legacy group". Unfortunately My array still does not show up on my window boot disk and thus cannot install windows. What do I need to do to install windows on my array? I read somewhere that it would be necessary to do a low level format of the disks before i create the raid array, but i have already put a significant amount of data on the array already so before i do that i wanna make sure that's actually my problem before i go through the hassle of moving all my data back onto other drives.

Here's a screen of the management program as it looks right now, and the menu from which i enabled the "legacy support".

*Note: For some handicapped reason i cant find a single model number for my drive on either the frys website, or on the box it came in. If it is important to the issue at hand though i can take out a drive and get.

 

[billbartuska]

1.) Windows (nor any software running under windows will not be able to read an unformayyed disk. See yes, read/write, no.

2.) To install raid you have to install the raid drivers, and the configure the array with it's configutation utility.

3.) To install Windows on an array, it has to be set as the boot device in the BIOS first. But the BIOS won't see the array until the Windows drivers are installed. There's a conumdrum in the previous two sentences.... But many have figured it out. How about you?

 

[Child_OD]

Alright well i thought i had installed the drivers when i installed the windows raid utility but apparently I didn't. So now the array is showing up in my bios, and i already had my HDD's as the primary boot device, and as soon as the array showed up i set it at the top of the HDD priority.

Unfortunately that still didn't cause it to show up in the windows boot disk, "disk viewer".
To your point #1 I am able to read/write to the partitions that i already created on my array with quick format.

To point #2 what do you mean by configure the array, I have created it using the default stripe size and such, is there some particular setting which would cause the issue i am having, or is there something else i am missing?

Thanks

 

[Child_OD]

Hate to do it but
-Bump-
FREE* CANDY TO ANYBODY WHO HELPS
*free before the $99.99 S&H fee

Seriously though if there is any information i am omitting which would be beneficial just tell me.