Dante send in this interesting story and I thought I share it the way he send it to me and ask everyone if they know of a way to install Windows Vista on a SATA Raid without difficulties. Let the story begin:
I had recently purchased parts to build a new PC and had encountered a Dicken’s of a time getting it to install at all. Now here’s the whacked out part: I followed the advice from online that Intel recommends I set the BIOS to RAID versus leaving it at SATA. This is because once the OS is installed, it can’t be changed without blue screens of death.
After selecting RAID, I tried to install Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit. It won’t recognize the SATA drives. It sees them, even formats them. But won’t install to them.
When I put in a PATA drive, Vista all of the sudden let’s me install onto the SATA drives. But when I remove the PATA drive, Vista doesn’t recognize the SATA’s again. I wound up installing Vista on the PATA and using the SATA as program and data drives, respectively.
Parts:
Motherboard: ECS Elitegoup’s GF7100PVT-M3 with built-in nVidia 7100 VGA/DVI 256meg video.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M
RAM: 2x G.SKILL 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 PC2 6400 (4 gig total)
HD: 2x 500gig Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS SATA II drives
DVD-R/W: Lite-On LH-20A1S SATA
Related posts:
Windows Vista has problems with large zip filesSamsung 24 SSD Raid Viral Marketing
Enable SATA Hot Swap
STOP 0×0000000A Error on Windows Vista Installation
Raid Tutorial
14 Responses to “Vista SATA RAID Installation Problems”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
[...] Original post by Martin [...]
-
[...] Vartotojai skundžiasi, kad Windows Vista neatpažįsta S-ATA diskų masyvų. Operacinė sistema diegimo metu „mato“ juos, bet negali būti įdiegta. Nesuderinamumas su RAID yra pagrindinė priežastis, dėl kurios negaliu naudotis Linux. Bet juk Microsoft galėjo išspręsti tvarkyklių problemą? [...]
No offense, but if you cant figure out how to properly install windows onto a raid array then you need to write an article asking for help, not complaining.
It is simple if you just follow the steps that have been around since RAID first appeared.
It is the same method you would use with XP so you cant blame Vista for it.
I wont say more as a simple google search will give you all the information you need.
I did write an email to Martin asking for help. It was just edited. As to RAID, after I’d removed the RAID setting from BIOS and restarted the whole thing as just plain SATA, I still have this problem. I had included the motherboard info because I’m not sure if I’d hosed up the BIOS or Vista Ultimate is giving me a particular headache.
And a search through Google, Yahoo and Astalavista yielded no clues.
Dante I usually do not react to comments that say it’s all so easy without offering any help whatsoever. Unless he does post a possible solution I would simply ignore the comment.
I know Martin, I just wanted to clarify that I had reset the BIOS to SATA from RAID after RAID bombed out. Oh, and as a curiousity, did “me_not_you_says” IP look remarkably similar to africanboy’s?
Hey Dante I had a similar situation (not with RAID) I was having problems with just recognizing a single SATA drive. Turns out it was the ECS mobo. I got the cheaper mobo bundle instead of getting better parts. I got an ASUS board and problems went away.
I hope that helps your research.
Thanks “observer”. This was my first time with SATA install. Was wandering what the heck was going on. For now, I’m sticking with the PATA OS drive and SATA data drives config. Mostly because it’d already cost me two days of annoyance :) I’ll switch motherboard as soon as I have free time. Hopefully I won’t have to call Microsoft India to re-register the Vista license when I change mobo.
Oh. As a side note to the techies here. For some reason, Vista Ultimate is definitely much much more stable than Vista Home Premium. Especially for old games. And here I thought they were basically the same OS with different packaging…..
Ever tried to use the latest SATA Raid Controller Driver before Installing Windows? Had the same problem with nforce4 Raid but was able to fix it this way. Before Installation Vista offers the option to add additional harddisk drivers.
I did try the latest SATA Raid Controller Driver upon install, but Vista just blithely ignore the SATA’s as drives that an OS can install on. As “observer” said, I’m going to need a new motherboard.
I have a problem, I added another 1TB hard drive using SATA and at first, I had it on #2, as the main drive is on 0, and the DVD was on 1. Well Windows Vista didn’t recognize the HD until I switched it with the DVD, now Vista won’t recognize my DVD.
Does anyone know what I am doing wrong.
To Matthias: I seem to remember something about having to remove the DVD drive assignment from your Registry. Than plug in the DVD drive and it’ll recognize it as a fresh install. How to do this, I’m not too sure. You’ll have to search for it. A search for the term “remove dvd vista registry” came up with various scenarios, you’ll have to decide which one suits your predicament.
Trying to install Vista home basic on my PC all connections are OK checked and re-checked.
The process gets to the point where Vista is completing the install and it hangs a little while after which it reboot itself, de-installing vista and automatically retuning to win xp. I can’t seem to get beyond that point. I will be greatful of any clue to this problem.