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i have the maximus formula with the intel ich9r chip. i set up my system before i got my raptors and it's on a 32 bit xp setup. what i want to do is be able to boot into that setup or general stuff (my raid is strictly for speed and doesn't have room for music, etc.)... is there any way to do that without turning off the raid???
RAID 0 = 2x raptor 150
NON Raid = 500 GB drive with XP32
thanks! :yepp:
oh, and if this needs to be moved, please do so!
each bios is different but normally in bios youselect boot order then select the raid assecondary and single as primary or first device.
Simply solution, install system on raptor raid and have 500GB as a secondary drive. You will be ale to access it without losing data.
If you need to boot 500GB hdd now in RAID mode you need to do a windows recovery and use F6 to load drivers from floppy
If you have XP32 on a single disk and a stripe raid array on two raptors and you want to boot from the two raptors, you need:
- install ich9r raid drivers on XP. Probably you already did it, or the raid volume is not seen under XP.
- copy with Ghost, Acronis or similar utilities the entire XP disk or partition into the raid volume. Remember to copy the MBR and boot sectors. Some programs ask you if you want or not.
- disable the single disk or put in the BIOS as second choice during the booting. First choice has to be the raid array.
You did it :)
raid is up and running, no problem there... the problem i'm wondering about is that my original xp32 doesn't have the raid drivers installed... will it boot? the last time i checked it gave me a BSOD. i haven't tried it since then lol. maybe i should give it a shot again.
so i guess my real question is, do i need to install the ich9r drivers on the xp32 in order to use it as a dual boot system?
so i tried just changing the HDD priority and when i chose XP32 i ended up with a BSOD and i restarted. when i tried booting in XP64 with the same settings (has the option of either OS versions, obviously) it gave me some error message (not a BSOD). so i'm not sure where to go from here.
rereading, i may not be coming out clear enough on what i'm trying to do...
XP64 is on raid. XP32 is on 500GB single drive. i want to be able to boot into either. 64 will be my "fast" set up and 32 will be my "media" setup for playing music and all that jazz. also want to use 32 to make copies of my different partitions (will have X64, V64, Linux) on the raid array. can i not boot from the 500gb without changing bios settings? can they co-exist?Quote:
Originally Posted by kiwi
Seems to me you're missing a critical step. Internally, Windows stores references to the drive it is installed on using a different notation to the simple "C: D:" etc. ones we are familiar with. The drive ordering/numbering follows an "ARC path" pattern like: Partition x on Physical drive x on Adapter x, where the main motherboard adapter is first (any plugged-in and other onboard adapters will be numbered higher) and the drive ordering is given by which port on the adapter you've plugged it into. In this ordering the significance is reversed, ie. the adapter is more significant than the drive than the partition, obviously.This physical ordering is part of the way the "C: D:" etc. naming is derived by Windows, but where the BIOS will tell the OS that the first booting drive partition is "C:" because you've set that in the boot order, Windows will compare the actual partition physical location (the ARC path) with what it has stored internally, where the system booted from when it was installed. Any mismatch will cause a boot failure.
So, to succeed with this, you'd really need to do a separate full install of Windows on the RAID set, so that the location of the system partition is hardwired into that installation correctly. The failure of your old installation is probably because you've added the Raptors into your existing machine, and that has changed the physical ordering of the disks so that the location of your old boot drive is now incorrect for the old installation. You may need to reinstall that as well, unless you can change how the disks are plugged into the mainboard to restore the old ordering. Because of this physical location issue, it's unusual to just copy an existing system partition onto another physical drive and run it without making alterations or swapping drives, as installing a new disk (or adapter) always changes the ordering of subsequent ones. If you fix the problem with the new installation but keep the original copied partition to boot from, that must subsequently fail as it is now in the wrong location.
Once you have completed both your installs correctly, with all the drives in place while you do it (with the boot startup selected correctly from the BIOS), then you should be able to simply switch the boot order in the BIOS to change between them.
okay, so here is what i'm getting from what you said (which seems to be quite the explanation)...
Raptors in raid 0 (will have different partitions, etc.)
C: XP64
V: Vista64
L: Linux
G: Storage (games most likely hence the G)
500GB drive (will most likely have two partitions)
X: XP32
Y: Storage and backups, etc.
right now, what you're saying, is that i have essentially two "C" drives and that's causing conflicts. here is what i'm wondering... how can i go about doing this with a disk imager? can i even do that? when i load the image on will all the files still exsist with the "C:" root? or are the files configured in a "\programs\123.exe" with whatever drive letter it's on being at the begining? i haven't been in the programing world since highschool so i'm a little out of the loop with this. thanks for all the help.
It's not about the drive "name", the "C:" or whatever. Obviously when an installation is running it will see the other installation drive as something other than C:, as that is reserved for itself.
I'm saying you shouldn't be able to just image your working Windows system partition from the single drive and copy it onto the Raptors and use both without any changes. Because one was installed on partition 1 on physical drive 1 on adapter 1, or whatever, and the new hardware doesn't match that location so booting will fail. Correcting my terminology from the previous post (rusty MCSE memory, sorry), this is called the "ARC path", you'll see it in plain text in the file boot.ini in the root of C:, and it's what's basically what's changed when you use the Repair Console to repair a non-booting partition. (Type bootcfg in a DOS command window to see your boot.ini options.)
BUT, it will take more than changing this in a copied drive image to solve the boot problem, I am 99% sure. I went round the houses for a week or more trying to copy a working Windows installation off SCSI disks attached to a SCSI card onto a mainboard-connected SATA drive, using Acronis True Image and the Repair Console, and ultimately failed without a reinstall, because the ARC path was different between where Windows was originally installed and the new drive where I wanted it that wasn't on the SCSI adapter. Even using a plug-in SATA card I couldn't find a physical ordering that matched the original no matter the combination of hardware I tried, which is why I presume this must be stored internally somewhere in Windows itself. I had some other quirks in my install so maybe my problem was actually something else and maybe it will work for you. :shrug:
All I am recommending is you don't try and do a partition image copy and expect both to work. Assuming you can get your old installation to work, I'd strongly recommend you do a new install on the Raptors, with all the hardware in place and the boot option selected in the BIOS beforehand just as you want it for that boot sequence. If physically adding the Raptors has screwed your old installation, try reordering the mainboard SATA connections to restore the drive ordering, else use the Repair Console (bootcfg or fixboot, I always forget which) to fix the non-booting partition with the Raptors installed as you want them. Get that working first before you attempt the install/copy onto the Raptors.
I am presuming the point of having this new faster install (for benching?) is that it will be a stripped-down version of Windows compared to your old one. So I kinda fail to see the benefit of copying your old installation anyway with all the accumulated crud. You are surely better off with a fresh install in any case.
you're thinking i'm trying to do something i'm not... i'm not changing the drive or anything like that. the XP32 i have is already installed on the 500gb from before the raid config and i just want to be ablet o boot into it. nothing else. the raid 0 is for my image processing, etc. the xp32 was installed previously onto the 500gb single drive, that's where i want to keep it. i just can't boot into it without a bsod.
As I explained above, adding new hardware generally screws existing installations. If you're getting a BSOD rather than a "Windows cannot start" message then it's probably unrecoverable. Just reinstall on the 500GB drive, but make sure that you have selected this drive as the booting one in the BIOS before you do. You'll need the RAID drivers for the Raptor array as an F6 floppy so that Windows can enumerate the drives correctly.