booting vista on a 3tb array (QPT without EFI)

GeX · 3 Feb 2009 at 13:48

Hi..

can anyone shed some light on how to do this, i have an evga 780i mobo, and have 6x500gb drives in RAID0. I want my C drive to be 1tb of that array, and the remaining space my D drive.

Am running vista ultimate 64. I know vista has issues with >2tb on a disk, and this can be worked around - but what about for the boot drive? I've looked around, and best i can work out - the disk has to be setup as GPT, and then to boot that i need EFI.. which my mobo doesn't have.

Is there a way i can let the BIOS load a boot loader off, say another drive, or CD, that can then boot the QPT RAID Array?

Fanatic · 3 Feb 2009 at 14:02

Why not just use say 100GB for the boot drive with Vista on it, then split the rest into partitions?

Sp00n · 3 Feb 2009 at 14:05

1tb for a boot drive? Seems a bit excessive, go with what fanatic said.

GeX · 3 Feb 2009 at 14:27

because windows sees it as one disk, and without GPT can't handle that. so it's not bootable. it isnt the boot drive partition size that is the issue, its the fact the disk is over 2tb.

m4cc45 · 3 Feb 2009 at 15:00

Array needs reducing to <2TB as said by GeX.

Perhaps, if you really wanted a 1TB boot drive, then split the RAID groups up.

1 x 1TB
1 x 2TB

Would be more logical.

M.

GeX · 3 Feb 2009 at 16:49

it's not a 1tb boot drive that i'm too fussed about, i want my boot drive to have 6 drives for performence reasons... bleh, looks like this aint gonna be easy eh.

rpstewart · 3 Feb 2009 at 17:28

There is a simple solution - ditch the mobo. If you go for an Intel based board you can use the Matrix RAID functionality to create a 1Tb array across the first 1024/6Gb (you do the maths!) and a second (or more if you want) array across the remaining space.

Unfortunately I can see the SLi requirement coming next

EDIT: Had another idea. What you need is a gash HDD that appears with a lower drive number than the array, you might need to go with an IDE one for that. One of the reasons you always recommend only having one HDD connected when installing Windows is to stop the installer putting the boot files on one drive and the rest on the other. I think what you need to do is exactly that - boot the system of a small disk but put all the files you need quick access to elsewhere.

Be aware this is only a hunch at the minute but it might just work.

philjohn · 3 Feb 2009 at 17:31

Also, I hope you have a decent backup solution - that many disks in a RAID 0 configuration would not have me sleeping well at night.

GeX · 3 Feb 2009 at 17:35

rpstewart said:
There is a simple solution - ditch the mobo. If you go for an Intel based board you can use the Matrix RAID functionality to create a 1Tb array across the first 1024/6Gb (you do the maths!) and a second (or more if you want) array across the remaining space.

Unfortunately I can see the SLi requirement coming next

EDIT: Had another idea. What you need is a gash HDD that appears with a lower drive number than the array, you might need to go with an IDE one for that. One of the reasons you always recommend only having one HDD connected when installing Windows is to stop the installer putting the boot files on one drive and the rest on the other. I think what you need to do is exactly that - boot the system of a small disk but put all the files you need quick access to elsewhere.

Be aware this is only a hunch at the minute but it might just work.

yeah.. it's looking like a case of one or the other. doh.

re the edit; that is what i was thinking, a smaller drive to handle the BIOS > MBR (small disk) and then aother to go small disk > GPT

philjohn said:
Also, I hope you have a decent backup solution - that many disks in a RAID 0 configuration would not have me sleeping well at night.

pair of 1.5tb drives in a NAS box, i sleep fine