Big problem trying to setup RAID volume alongside existing boot drive

Biglunn

Biglunn

Biglunn

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Well after much deliberating, I decided to set up a RAID 0 volume for storage alongside my boot drive.

What I had was 1 x Samsung F3 500gb as my boot drive, 1 x WD 500gb storage drive - both connected via SATA in AHCI mode.

I bought 2 x Seagate 7200.12 500gb drives with the intention of replacing the 1 WD drive in a RAID 0 config, but with keeping the SAMSUNG F3 as the boot drive with WIndows 7 already installed on it.

So..... I simply shut down the PC, removed the WD drive, fitted the 2 x Seagate drives (connected to SATA 5 & 6), started up the PC to BIOS menu - changed storage configuration from AHCI to RAID, rebooted the PC to the RAID menu (CTRL + I), setup a raid volume on the 2 x Seagate drives - not touching the Samsung boot drive, rebooted, and now the PC doesnt recognise a boot drive! :eek:

Worried that I have lost all my data on my Samsung boot drive, I restored the BIOS setting from RAID to AHCI, but it still doesnt boot!!! Have I lost everything on my Samsung boot drive simply by switching the BIOS setting from AHCI to RAID?

If I have to install Windows 7 again, do I need an F6 driver at the install stage for the Storage RAID volume?

Lots of questions (and frustrations) I know, but any help would be much appreciated :)
 
you shouldn't have lost everything, check in the bios that the system is still set to boot off the Samsung F3, oh and you are sure you pulled the storage drive and not the O/S drive yeah? (have to ask).

Assuming you get it working again, you prob don't wanna hear this now but you dont need to use the motherboard raid for what you want, just plug the two new ones in, go to drive manager in windows, right click on one and select new stripe (raid 0 partition) and it will create a software raid partition using the two drives, this will give higher performance than using the bios raid. (bios raid is still better for raid1 mirroring)
 
Hi.

Yes, the bios is set to boot off the Samsung F3. But I simply get the `media not recognised` after post. Yes, I have pulled the WD drive - I have in the past overlooked the obvious! :)

Worst case scenario is that Ive lost everything on the boot drive. I might try booting off the windows disk, and try recovery.

I still cannot believe that setting AHCI > RAID in the BIOS could have caused the boot drive to not be recognised :(
 
The way you had it set up before, did you (perhaps without realising) have the bootloader on the WD drive you've pulled? If the bootloader's on the missing drive, Windows won't boot, even though it's installed on the Samsung drive.

If that's the case, you should (I think... I've never tried) be able to fix it by repair booting with your windows disk.
 
Switching from AHCI > RAID will knacker it... I've done the same :( (Albiet with a SSD as boot and 2 x 750Gb Seagates)

As suggested re boot to your install disk and try the repair startup option. Sometimes you have to try it a few times to make it work :)
 
Well.... I tried to do a repair install, but it wouldnt work! It asked for drivers as it didnt recognise a previous Windows install

What I did do was a reinstall of windows without formatting - and then it DID recognise an existing windows installation, moved it to windows.old, and installed properly.

I then retrieved all my important data, moved it to my new RAID volume, and then cleaned up my boot drive.

Got there in the end!

One other thing - I have built the RAID volume from the BIOS (hardware). I hear people suggesting that software raid is better - in what way?
 
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