After enabling raid0, blue screen of death

Question

Im trying to get a raid0 setup going. I have a 750 gb hdd with the OS on it and two 80gb HDD. For right now, I just want to raid0 on the two 80Gb hdd.

When I enable raid in my Bios, Win7 has a BSOD during boot. As far as I understand I need to install raid drivers. However how can I do this?

The win7 DVD doesnt seem to have a driver install option.

Any suggestions? Thanks

EDIT: I saw that there was as seperate setting for the 4th and 5th sata ports. So I pluged in my OS drive into there and left it on IDE. Still didnt work though, am I miss understanding that idealogy?

Solution 1

OK, the answers here are not entirely correct.

I was able to get my working without reinstalling the OS.

1) Sometimes the mobo's raid controller has two extra sata ports that are not part of the RAID controller, so move your OS drive there. 2) Enable the RAID controller, and this is where I went wrong, DONT CONFIGURE THE RAID JUST YET. 3) Let Windows Boot up, it will install the drivers for the raid controller. If not you can just get the drivers from the MOBO's website. 4) Restart and configure your raid :) 5) You will have to format your drives when you turn it back on, since they have to system type

Solution 2

I would bet that in the process of trying to enable RAID, you're switching your SATA adapter from "compatible" mode (where it operates similarly to an IDE controller) to AHCI mode. Your adapter has to be in AHCI/RAID mode to enable RAID on anything connected to it. When you switch this, it appears as a completely different device to Windows, thus Windows basically says, "Hey! Where did all my data go!?" because it doesn't know about this device. The only fix really is to reinstall Windows.

Comments

[MT.]

What mode was the RAID adapter in when you installed windows?

[MDMarra]

pertaining to your letest edit - if the 2nd set of ports is on a different controller, then it has a different driver - thus your problem.

[thegreyspot]

I am not raiding the actual windows drive, does that still mean it is impossible?

[thegreyspot]

But im just confused because, raid is not enabled on the drive that is holding the OS, so it shouldnt be looking for the data. Right?

[MDMarra]

Changing the level on a hardware RAID card really depends on the card. You can't go from 10 to 5 or 5 to 10 on most cards. You can't go from 0 to 1, or 1 to 0 either usually. You can grow RAIDs on most cards, but changing the level on the fly is usually very tough.

[William Hilsum]

+1 agreed - I just wanted to make the point that once Windows knows you want to use RAID, it doesn't matter what you set in Hardware, it will keep working as Windows will see it as the same hard drive... I agree that it is awkward to switch.