Windows 8 Clean Install with RAID Setup Issues

Hey gang,

Until very recently i was running Windows 8 with a 240 GB Sandisk SSD as a primary and a 2 TB Western Digital Green HDD as a storage. I decided to set up a RAID 1 setup so i purchased a second 2 TB HDD and installed it.

My intent was to run windows 8 off the 240 SSD as a primary and have a RAID 1 setup for my 2TB HDDs.

I learnt that my data configuration was set to AHCI. I decided to do a complete clean install and change the sata configuration in BIOS to RAID.

After successfully creating a RAID volume using my 2TB HDDs i proceeded to install Windows off my primary. I am however having difficulties in that it will not allow me to install windows on either drive.

As i am very new to setting up my own home pc and RAID configurations, can anybody provide some advice or shed some light on any rookie mistakes i am making.

Any input would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hey,

Something that stands out to me immediately is that you would probably want to be running AHCI for the SSD, so the trim command can be enabled for the SSD.

What I would do is get an add-on card for the RAID drives and attach to that. This way, the card can run the RAID driver (some card based on Silicon Image chipset which would be reliable, good drivers, not expensive at all) independent of the SSD boot/system drive.

Example: SYBA SD-LP-PEX2IR Controller Card - Newegg.com

Another advantage to a setup as I suggest is that the RAID will not share bandwidth with the boot/system AHCI SSD.

Maybe some other people on this forum will have other suggestions though, as many damn well know their stuff.
I'm a newb with things like this because I never had the hardware to do stuff like this. But still, I think my response is solid enough.

If you decide against a card, you probably will need the correct RAID driver for your motherboard to install Windows well. That's just a guess though. There is a place during the install that you can tell it that you have a driver you want to "give it" so-to-speak. It can be on CD, DVD, USB stick.

Also, some motherboards allow you to have a set of ports as one standard, and another set of ports as another. Look at motherboard manual if interested about this.

Thanks MasterChief, I will definitely look into this as an option as it does sound relatively easy to set up.

I am also open to any other options that would produce the same result as the intended RAID 1 set up if anyone can suggest.

I am curious to know however if anyone out there has experienced this particular issue with installation of Windows in the same situation I have and if there is a solution for this.

As you said, there are many out there who definitely know their stuff. If the answer is out there, I would be confident this forum is the best place to find it.

Thanks again.

paddles
please provide full specs in your profile so we can see what kind of RAID you have.

I assume you have Intel Chipset RAID?

In this case, I believe, you cannot use AHCI for one Disk and RAID for the others. It is either or. However, Intel Raid should support all the AHCI features you may want to take advantage of like TRIM and Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

Now, tell us please what the error message is when you want to install Windows on an disk and it won't allow you and which mode you used to install Windows. It could be that you have booted Windows in UEFI mode and the HDDs are formatted in MBR or the other way round (you have booted in legacy BIOS mode and the HDDs are formatted in GPT)