Non RAID to RAID

[Flukester]

Lo all

Just thought I'd post how to convert a non raid system with ICH*R controller to RAID without a reinstall on vista... maybe there is easier ways but from my experience this is only way.

Problem is as soon as you flick your BIOS to ICH9R RAID the HD controller changes and windows dies so had to do the following..

- Boot up current single disk in machine with a SIL3112 RAID card plugged in
- Install SIL3112 driver
- Move single HD to SIL3112 RAID card and check it boots ok
- Restart and flick BIOS to ICH9R RAID mode
- Install 2 new disks into PC and setup stripe in ICH9R RAID manager
- Boot up PC on SIL3112 controller to plug and play ICH9R RAID controller (confirm you see stripe set in disk manager)
- Shut down PC and remove SIL3112 card and plug single windows install back into mobo
- Boot on Acronis True image CD and image single drive to RAID disks

Then.... do a vista windows repair, takes a second to sort out boot system files.

Hey presto, RAID system created from single disk...


....microsoft really do suck sometimes lol



You possibly could skip the use of external controller card and just windows repair, but this way always works and especially well when swapping board altogether where HD controller differences usually end up in BSOD and windows reinstall.

Worth noting any problems booting an old disk on a new motherboard are always down to disk controller... bypassing this with a PCI controller card like a SIL / Highpoint etc always allows swapping of disks without reinstall as you give OS a chance to plug and plug your new mobo before using it's controller.

 

[Mike1983]

Hello

Looks like you've managed to do what I'm currently trying to do and having problems (see topic link below)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17927378

Just a few comments about your post, and sorry if they're basic questions but I'm still trying to get my head around this!

1) If you already have a RAID card then what are the benefits of first installing the drives on the card then swapping them back over to the ICH mobo controller? In other words, why not just keep them running from the seperate RAID card? I ask this as I'm thinking of investing in a seperate RAID card.

2) I've had difficulties using windows repair to install the RAID drivers for the ICH controller. When trying repair in SATA-IDE mode Windows repair didnot find any problems therefore did not update anything despite pointing it at the new RAID drivers on the CD. Assuming this would cure itself by trying repair in SATA-RAID mode I gave this a try but no matter what I tried I couldn't seem to boot from CD/DVD therfore have the ability of running windows repair.

At the moment I'm either going to invest in a seperate RAID card or a single velociraptor.

Mike

 

[Flukester]

Hiya

The SIL3112 based RAID card i was using is very old tech compared with ICH9R and also is on the PCI bus which im guessing is limited bandwidth. I think unless your planning on buying a very expensive RAID card you'd be better with the ICH controller (keeps things simple and thats the way forward for a reliable system)

Its weird that you could not boot from cd when ICH in raid mode... on all Asus boards you just hit F8 at post to bring up boot selection popup, not sure on Abit boards. You sure you had boot sequence to CD boot first and the DVD drive was showing on post ? (try another SATA header if not)

I guess the question is if when the bios goes to raid mode windows actually need to install a new driver or it's handled by standard one. Maybe windows does not boot because of a simple config problem with boot files... i've yet to work this out.

If it does need to install a raid driver when bios changes will windows repair install it ?

I got round this by booting system on the 3rd party card right into windows so it could sort itself out... but it's possible that did not actually do anything as i still needed to do a quick windows repair

Its all abit of a mess, so much for microsoft making vista bootable on anything... if all else fails maybe just reinstall, make sure you download sp1 as a complete file to install after windows install or you get caught up in over 1gb of windows updates and it'll suck up a whole day grrrrr


Sorry for being vague on all this, i just bodge my way through and it's probably not worth trying to get head round whats going on in detail... as long as it works at end of day

edit: if your really stuck and want to go with your existing install id be happy to send you a sil raid card in post so you can try what i did... i have a box of about 50 of them, so you can keep it, no charge

 

[Mike1983]

Hiya,

Yes I'm positive I'd set up things correctly in the BIOS to boot from SATA CD/DVD drive as the first option, I even set this as the second option as well as the first (without HDD being listed in the boot order) but it still would not boot from the DVD drive! I've just managed to get around this today by ddoing the same thing but disconnecting my HDD's so it cannot even see them.

After doing so and getting into the Vista repair screen it obviously cannot see any O/S partition to repair due to the HDD's being disconnected. So whilst still in the setup screen I reconnect my HDD's, Vista repair then see's the O/S and immediately tells me there is a problem that requires repairing but in the description it does not implicitly state anythin to do with RAID, it just mentions about the boot file or something so I didn't do any repairs incase it caused problems.

Well at least I know I can actually boot up from DVD in RAID mode now, I think I'm goign to go for a complete fresh install on 2x Velociraptors. Thanks very much for the offer of the RAID card though!

Mike

 

[Flukester]

yeah good idea, the two raptors will fly on a fresh install... just remember after vista is installed to load the latest intel matrix raid util, you can turn on write back caching from there and gives a nice boost in speed.

gl