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[Ubiquitous35 Profile]

Hi out there,

I have been searching through the posts and can't seem to find an answer to my problem.

I currently have a Rampage Extreme Mother board, 2 300G WD Velociraptors in Raid 0 (a single partition) with Vista Ultimate 64 Installed and properly licensed. I pulled out those 2 drives and went into the Bios and selected IDE instead of RAID and installed another properly licensed version of Vista Ultimate 32 onto a 1TB Samsung HD. I have an additional 1TB Sami installed as a data storage HD.
Problem: The only way I can boot Vista 64 on the RAID is to enter the bios and select RAID as the SATA configuration. After I do this, the bios see the samsung HD's under the Hard Disk Drives menu, but when I go to Boot Device Priority in the Bios, the Samsung drives are not an option, only the RAID drive is a boot option with the CD as another option and remov. Drive as another option. The only way I can boot up Vista 32 on the Samsung is to restart the computer, go into the bios, and change the SATA configuration to IDE instead of raid. needles to say, when i do that the raid drive no longer is seen as a drive and I pull out the 2 HD's so I don't mess them up. they are in a hot swap bay. Meaning, i can just pull on them to unplug.

If, i don't have to satrt from scratch, does anyone have any ideas on dual booting vista 64 and 32?
If, i do have to start from scratch, should i partition the RAID into 2 drives and then install an OS on each. That way when I boot with Bios setting, Sata Config- RAID, they should both be a Boot Device Option in the BIOS. I also have an F8 function with my Motherboard that allows me to choose the boot drive on startup.

Confirm, correct, or disregard me. I would appreciate correct and redirection from you as I don't have a good dual boot system yet.
Thank You so Much.

[Grav!ty Profile]

With all drives plugged in (both SATA drives and the IDE) you should be able to configure your RAID 0 drive with the RAID configuration BIOS and then have both the drives (the two RAID 0 drives being one, and the IDE non RAID drive being the second) recognized where you configure the drives in the normal BIOS. Are you using hardware RAID or software RAID...that is are you actually entering the RAID configuration BIOS by pressing Ctrl+I?

Once you have the RAID 0 drive configured and Vista 64 installed, it may be necessary to install the SATA RAID drivers on the Vista 32 IDE drive in order for the Vista 32 installation to see the RAID drive containing Vista 64 installation. If the Vista 32 install cannot see the Vista 64 install drive and file system you will not be able to set up a dual boot menu showing both installations.


EDIT: Whoops you have the Marvell 88SE6121 controller for the IDE drive and it's not possible to install the Intel RAID drivers to the Vista 32 installation on that drive. It's probably necessary to create a partition for Vista 32 on your RAID 0 drive in order to have a full dual boot working.

[Ubiquitous35 Profile]

You are right, I do have the Marvell 88SE61xx that loads first during boot up, then the Intel Matrix Storage manager ROM v7.5.0.1017 ICH9R wRAID..... loads up after that.
So, you don't think it's possible to go to Intel and get the 64 bit Intel Matrix controller and install it when I am booted up in Vista 32? I mostly don't know what I am saying, I'm just putting things together, barely (hanging on by the skin of my teeth).
Follow up Q. Then I take it, you suggest creating a fresh RAID 0 array stipped 64? 128?, with 2 partitions,then, installing vista 64 or 32 first? or does it not matter? Then use the Motherboards F8 function to load either OS? I have Vista Boot Pro, but it sounds like I won't need it?

Thanks for looking up the stuff for me. Marvell ......

[Ubiquitous35 Profile]

Oh, I have the Ctrl-I function, so I'm not sure if its a hardware RAID or a Software RAID? I wanna say software RAID/

[Grav!ty Profile]

Once booted to your Vista 64 installation on the RAID 0 setup, you should be able to shrink that partition from Disk Management (right click the drive>Shrink), and then install Vista 32 on the new partition that is created. That will give you a dual boot menu and you'll be able to dual boot without using the F8 function. It also means you'll only need to reinstall Vista 32 and not need to break your current RAID 0 configuration.

Using Crtl+I gives you hardware RAID configuration which is preferable

[Ubiquitous35 Profile]

Thanks Gravity, I'll do that. I have an issue with the shrink function as it is only giving me 24MB available for shrink. I did see a post on this site talking about how to shrink. its about a dozen posts before this on this Vista Forum.
Thanks for your quick response. I hope I can get the shrink to work as it would save me a lot of work.

[Grav!ty Profile]

Great, let us know how you go.

[Ubiquitous35 Profile]

OK, what I tried first after shrinking the raid drive was to install an Acronis image of Vista 32 to the new partition. then I inserted the vista 32 CD disk and repaired the start up. This did not work. I don't know if it did not work because the Vista 32 image was taken from a non-raid drive on the same computer (hardware profile the same). I just got a blue screen saying the computer shut down to prevent damage. I reinstalled Vista 32 onto the new partition on the raid drive and Voila, it worked. the only bad thing is I had to reinstall all the software and drivers again. PAIN.
What I would like to do next is install XP on the 3rd partion I made on the raid drive. Can I drop a partition of windows XP on the 3rd partion somehow and with vista boot pro, make it work. The xp was installed on this computer as well and has all the hardware drivers for the computer.
Thanks,
This has been a fun tinkering tinkering project. I hope someone may have advice about dropping the XP image on the 3rd RAID partition then making it bootable too as a 3rd OS.