Vista & nVRaid - installation guide and troubleshooting

[Fernando 1]

Thanks Fernando. My ISP forces a proxy so rapidshare is giving me some problems. Do you know of an alternative link for http://rapidshare.de/files/36969171/NF4 ... 44_x64.rar ?
Thanks.

No, but if you give me your eMail address, I wil send the package to you.

[Princess_Frosty]

When I tried installing Vista onto my RAID 0 array I had my 3rd IDE drive plugged in also which is where I did the search for the drivers which it read just fine.

Do you think it would recognise the partition OK if I removed the 3rd IDE disk and put the drivers onto CD/DVD or a floppy?

Has anyone here managed to get the RTM copy of Vista installed with a RAID setup as it's boot drive on the Nvidia S-ATA raid controller?

I don't really want to stay only running off one drive because the drives are only 36Gb each and I'm only running off one now, and vista is 10gb on it's own, I'd like to get my extra 36gb back and my extra speed for RAID 0 also!

The problem is to check to see if it works I have to build the array first which means the current partition is destroyed which means I lose the current install of vista, which makes me reluctant to try it because if I try it again and it doesn't work its going to take me 5-6 hours of messing around with the Vista install and appliaction/game installs to get Vista back to how I have it now

[obvious]

Thanks Fernando. My ISP forces a proxy so rapidshare is giving me some problems. Do you know of an alternative link for http://rapidshare.de/files/36969171/NF4 ... 44_x64.rar ?
Thanks.

No, but if you give me your eMail address, I wil send the package to you.

You're a gent

Edit: Email address removed.

[Fernando 1]

When I tried installing Vista onto my RAID 0 array I had my 3rd IDE drive plugged in also which is where I did the search for the drivers which it read just fine.
Do you think it would recognise the partition OK if I removed the 3rd IDE disk and put the drivers onto CD/DVD or a floppy?

Put the drivers onto a CD or floppy, unplug your IDE hdd and boot off the Vista DVD. There is nothing to warry about.

@ obvious:
Done

[Princess_Frosty]

But it didn't work last time are you SURE it will work this time?

One of the drives Im running vista off now is 1 of the 2 drives I use in my RAID array so If I try and it fails it means re-installing vista all over again for no reason

Which drivers do you suggest? I don't know if Im using just S-ATA or P-ATA drives, I don't really know the difference.

My mobo is the A8N-E and my drives are the WD 36gb 10,000RPM Raptors

*edit*

I also saw you meantion of the front page that maybe XP drivers also work, I've extracted the latest ones for these as well and will put it on my list of things to try!

[obvious]

Now posting from Vista RTM X64 on Raid 0

Thanks again

[Fernando 1]

But it didn't work last time are you SURE it will work this time?One of the drives Im running vista off now is 1 of the 2 drives I use in my RAID array so If I try and it fails it means re-installing vista all over again for no reason

No risk- no fun!
To be serious again: The only risk you have is, that your RAID will not be detected by the Vista Setup routine, but this decision will be made before you even can install Vista somewhere. So if the detection of your RAID fails, you will still have your previous datas.
Since several years I have a multi-boot system with several partitions within my RAID array. If any OS installation fails, I can still boot into another OS and even if the MBR is destroyed I can repair it by booting of an installed and perfectly running OS.

[Princess_Frosty]

But it didn't work last time are you SURE it will work this time?One of the drives Im running vista off now is 1 of the 2 drives I use in my RAID array so If I try and it fails it means re-installing vista all over again for no reason

No risk- no fun!
To be serious again: The only risk you have is, that your RAID will not be detected by the Vista Setup routine, but this decision will be made before you even can install Vista somewhere. So if the detection of your RAID fails, you will still have your previous datas.
Since several years I have a multi-boot system with several partitions within my RAID array. If any OS installation fails, I can still boot into another OS and even if the MBR is destroyed I can repair it by booting of an installed and perfectly running OS.

No you don't understand.

I have 2 drives, 2x 36Gb Raptors and a 3rd drive (IDE) which is used for storage and is basically full (about 1gb left)

1) Vista is the only OS im currently running
2) I only want to run 1 main partition and 1 OS (vista)
3) Vista is currently installed on 1 of the 36Gb raptors
4) I have to enabled the raid controler and create a partition across both raptor drives to test to see if it can be seen, if I do that the current install of vista will become unusable

So if I try this and it fails then I have to reinstall vista back onto 1 main drive and thats going to take me ages to get it configured to how I want it.

Is it worth the risk?

I mean is it documented that if you have a 3rd IDE drive present the detecting of the RAID fails? I can see both drives it just detects them as seperate drives rather than one main one which it should be doing.

[Fernando 1]

[I have 2 drives, 2x 36Gb Raptors and a 3rd drive (IDE) which is used for storage and is basically full (about 1gb left)
1) Vista is the only OS im currently running
2) I only want to run 1 main partition and 1 OS (vista)
3) Vista is currently installed on 1 of the 36Gb raptors
4) I have to enabled the raid controler and create a partition across both raptor drives to test to see if it can be seen, if I do that the current install of vista will become unusable
So if I try this and it fails then I have to reinstall vista back onto 1 main drive and thats going to take me ages to get it configured to how I want it.
Is it worth the risk?
I mean is it documented that if you have a 3rd IDE drive present the detecting of the RAID fails? I can see both drives it just detects them as seperate drives rather than one main one which it should be doing.

In your case I probably would be happy to have a running OS. If you want to test the install of a brandnew OS like Vista with poor support of nForce2/3/4 SataRaid systems, you need place on your hdd's and a running OS as security, if your test scenario fails.
Before you can try to install Vista onto a RAID array, you must rebuild the array. When you want to build a RAID0 (Stripe), you will loose all datas of both used hdd's.
There is not much documented about the effect of the presence of non-RAID hdd's during the install of Vista onto an nForce SataRaid system, but many users reported, that they only succeeded by unplugging them. But I don't really understand the risk of unplugging your IDE hdd during the Vista install. You can load the nForce SataRaid drivers from another device than a hdd.

[Princess_Frosty]

I've just tried reinstalling Vista but it failed again with all drivers, even with the IDE drive unplugged totaly, the old XP drivers didn't work, I even gave the 2k drivers a whirl and no luck either. I also worked out that if you press F6 when you start booting off the DVD then you can set advanced options, and I tried turning off the driver signing but that didn't help.

So I had to totaly rebuild windows from scratch again, I'm now reinstalling all my programs and configuring anything I don't have a saved cfg/ini for.

The trouble is not with the 3 drive (IDE), the trouble is that when I create a RAID set from my 2 primary disks then it creates a partition across the 2 discs which kills my partition with vista currently installed, the reason I tried without the IDE connected was because I thought it might effect how Vista detects the RAID, sadly that didn't help.

Looks like we're just going to have to wait for some official drivers, I hope they don't take too long about it.