Win 7 go from 1 disk no raid to 2 disk raid1 w/o re-install?

[David Roth weiss]

[Bob Sacramento] “Is it possible to go from 1 hard drive to RAID 1 (add another hard drive) without formatting? “

No!

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[Todd Perchert]

No, but you don’t need to do a clean install. You have 2 controllers on that mobo. Backup your files, because you will need to format your 1TB data drive – any data on it will be wiped out. Place the SSD on the SATA 6G, place the 2x1TB drives on the other SATA (3g) controller. You’ll probably need to go into the BIOS and tell it to set that controller to RAID. You should then be able to create the array from the controller BIOS when booting up, or software after you boot up.
If you’re not sure about anything, get someone who knows what they are doing to help or pay. Reading the manual will help as well.
Good Luck!
TC

[Bob Sacramento]

i made an external copy of the data on the 2nd disk.
then i set the the PCH SATA Control Mode to be RAID in BIOS.

then i rebooted and i saw a new raid configuration menu that you can open with CTRL+I.

i entered it and i configured raid for port 4 and port 5 of my 2 disks to be RAID 1. (Ports 0&1 are sata3, ports 2,3,4,5 are sata2).

then i exited and rebooted. upon reboot, it tries to load windows.. shows the logo screen for a second.. then blue screen for a split second and then just dies and restarts.

i noticed during bios post and when it prints the disks and its rain info. it shows my port 0 (SSD) drive is also using raid driver.
it also said ACHI driver not installed.
then it lists all my drives
then it tries to load windows and fails.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong here?

[Todd Perchert]

Sounds like it could be using all the SATA ports in the RAID. Should be able to switch back to non-RAID and boot up. But make sure first that it is indeed set in BIOS to try booting from that SSD drive before any other drives.
But, and I just thought of this… when selecting the RAID in the BIOS, it may have switched your port with the SSD drive to AHCI, try changing that to IDE.
TC

[Bob Sacramento]

so changing to RAID def sets it to use AHCI.

I reset my raids to non-raid.
set the controller to be IDE
restarted and was able to get into windows.

i looked up installing AHCI on my motherboard, i downloaded the install and read the install instructions, it says to hit F6 during windows install to install ahci drivers.. but i already have a system.

anyway i rebooted the machine and set the controller to be AHCI.
Now when i boot it says that AHCI is installed. … i havnt installed anything though..so I’m confused there

https://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3765#dl
SATA RAID Version Size Date Download Here
Intel SATA Preinstall driver
(For AHCI / RAID Mode)
Note: Press F6 during Windows setup to read from floppy.

10.6.0.1002 0.39 MB 2011/06/22 Asia China America Europe Europe(Russia) : FTP / Http

[Bob Sacramento]

okay i am closer to solving it.
i found this while googling the fact that i had blue screen of death when switching from IDE to AHCI

https://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244840-32-convert-sata-ahci-vista

that pointed me to the microsoft KB article
https://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976
which told me to modify registry

To resolve this issue yourself, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click one of the following registry subkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

so I set the controller back to IDE, was able to get into windows
then i chagned the registry
then i rebooted and changed controller back to AHCI
then i was able to boot into Windows!

Now what i am doing is… installed IRST Intel Rapid Storage Technology, which is a prereq to having ahci drivers for my motherboard.

It still failed when set to use RAID.

I then googled more and found this.. if you scroll to bottom a guy has 3 screens up
https://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/40484-ahci-bios-not-installed.html

Anyway i realized it says SATA native enabled for Ports 0-3. .. so maybe using ports 4&5 aren’t such good idea.
So i put the drives to ports 2 &3.

Then it still failed.

I went to bios and set CMOS to factory
I updated my bios with q flash from the bios menu with a usb stick.

I went to bios and set CMOS to factory
then i set it to optimized.
then i set it to raid

then i rebooted and set my raid configuration to non disk, then again set it up for 2 disks.

then rebooted.

still windows crashes right when i see logo screen..

[Todd Perchert]

You may want to go back to where it worked. Should be able to software RAID those drives if anything. You may want to check with Gigabyte as to why it crashes when changing to AHCI. I had to change from IDE to AHCI before on a EVGA board, the process was a whole lot smoother…

[Bob Sacramento]

Actually I am able to set the PCH Controller to AHCI now..
what i did was to insert the CD-ROM that came with the gigabyte motherboard and did express install of all the chipsets.
Now I can have all the drives connected and set the controller to AHCI.
On BIOS POST , i see it says AHCI BIOS installed now.

But as soon as I change the controller to RAID and enter the Raid configuration utility and create my 2 disks to be Raid… upon reboot it says AHCI BIOS not installed, and crashes when windows tries to boot

I am wondering if it is at all possible to have a system where 1 disk is used as the System disk and is NON RAID, and have 2 other disks to be set to RAID, which will be used for Data like pictures/music/movies.

Maybe its simple not possible to have a raid system where the main OS is not installed on a raid, but only the ‘slave’ drives are set to RAID.
Or am i wrong?

[Bob Sacramento]

this is kind of related to the above post, but from all my reading in the “Intel® Rapid Storage Technology” read me that i got from the gigabyte motherboard page, it seems like they want you to install the Raid controller/driver during Windows install.

So perhaps, you cannot start with a system that has Windows 7 already installed and try to setup raid on 2 other disks…

In my scenario, i am starting out with an install of windows 7 on ssd and adding 2 disks to be raid.
I think what the documentation wants me to do is install WIndows 7 and install raid controller right before windows 7 starts to install…

[Bob Sacramento]

I think I know why my OS is crashing…

I can get my OS to boot and all my disks to show up in AHCI mode..
But as soon as I set PCH Controller = RAID… it tries to boot ALL the drives with RAID controller, which makes sense why my OS would then crash.

I’ll paste a screenshot here so you can see what the printout is from BIOS POST of all the drives when in RAID mode
https://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2638/photo5q.png

I dont know where the settings live for setting the controller “per drive” or if its possible. Here is snapshot of choices in BIOS where I do set it… but it applies to ALL drives. You can see my choices are IDE/RAID/AHCI.
https://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8788/photo2y.png

Here is snapshot of when AHCI is enabled, and you can see all the drives post, then windows loads fine shortly after.
https://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9656/photo1y.png

Here is the snapshot of the Integrated Peripherals screen, you can see I set PCH Sata Control Mode to RAID, but its not per drive.. i think it affects all drives. I also have Sata Port0-3 Native Mode Enabled
https://img202.imageshack.us/img202/1757/photo3n.png

Here’s screen shot of the Hard Disk Boot Priority
https://img854.imageshack.us/img854/9633/photo4m.png

So I guess the main thing for me is to try and figure out how to get my OS to load in AHCI, while having the other drives load with RAID Controller…
The problem is I havnt been able to find a Per Drive controller setting.

I want my system to be like so…
* 120GB SSD non-RAID (run by AHCI controller) (Windows7 is installed here)
* 1TB Samsung drive RAID-1 (run by RAID controller) (used only for data, pictures/movies)
* 1TB Samsung drive RAID-1 (run by RAID controller)(used only for data, pictures/movies)

and what is happening is that when i set my PCH Sata Control to be AHCI, ALL disks are run by AHCI controller and everythings works and windows loads.

and when i set my PCH Sata Control to be RAID, ALL disks are run by RAID controller and it tries to boot my OS by RAID controller and fails! This is because i never initially set my controller to be raid when installing Windows 7.

Any ideas?