Installing Windows on RAID 0

[UkGamer]

Hello,
Ok i got my new 500Gb hard drive the other day so I decided to use this as a backup/storage and put my other 2 80's on RAID0

Anyway I thought it would be simple; put the driver on a floppy, setup the array from the BIOS loader, hit f6 during installation and it would work fine.

Unfortunately though after installing the driver during windows setup, it gives me the choice either of my 80gb drives to install windows on. If I install on either and then set my boot order back to RAID drive first it says that it is corrupt when i boot. I'm presuming this is because it has put all the data one disk and not split it between the 2 and then the BIOS is telling the RAID controller to load from both.

Perhaps I missed somthing or am looking at this the wrong way!?

Thanks.

Setup:

Installing Windows XP
Asus P5WD2-E Premium with marvell Raid controller ( and yes the 2 80's are plugged in the controller , the 500 is in the standard slot ).
3x Seagate barracuda HDD's 80, 80 and 500gb.

[Paul Komski]

I would recreate the array with just the two relevant drives attached. Check the main BIOS and any RAID BIOS. Press F6 as before and install the RAID/SCSI drivers. If setup still sees two hard drives either the BIOS are not set right or the drivers are wrong.

An alternative is to setup Windows normally on just one of the 80s. Install all the drivers etc etc (notably include the RAID drivers) and save an image file to your large drive. Recreate a brand new RAID and then restore the image file to the RAID array. You can then resize the partition(s) to fill the array with BiNG or PM if you wish.

[UkGamer]

Hmm never thought installing then saving the image. I will give that a try. thanks

[Paul Komski]

It should work but you must have the RAID drivers installed so that they are present when the image is restored to the actual RAID array otherwise the array wont be able "to see itself".

[UkGamer]

Ok, I've created a 2gb partition on one of my 80gb HDD's and installed windows on it. Although I didn't install the RAID driver during windows installation because I thought it might look for an array that wasn't there.

I installed the program from the BiNG (http://www.iol.ie/~krakowangus/bing.htm) link in your signature and made an image of the 2gb partition which I then presume I need to boot from the 500gb in order to setup the array on the other 2.

I will do this now and see if I can install this driver later.

[UkGamer]

UPDATE:

Right, now I restored the windows image to a 2gb partition on the 500gb but now it won't seem to boot from the 500Gb. I was wondering also if the drive letter made any differance although I was unable to edit the drive that windows was running on