[mk57nato]

Hello all...

I had been using a hitachi 2tb drive for my system, and had another not really being used in my htpc... So i get the great idea, why not raid them for speed So i proceed to clone my drive, wipe both 2tb drives and set them up in raid and proceed to load windows. That is when i find out i cant boot over 2tb into windows.

Lame but alright fine dont want to loose all the space so i pull drives wipe them and set all settings back to normal. I figure might as well do windows from scratch now so put 1 drive in, do the whole windows set up partition format and then start to load windows.

But windows wont load anymore. Try other 2tb drive.... exact same symptoms.

Cant seem to find any info why they dont work anymore. If i slap in the 1tb cloned drive, will boot to windows and work fine.

Did raid leave some kind of wierd structure that a partition and format wont get rid of?

Do i need to do a low lvl format?

I have only found 1 reference searching that sounds the same as mine, seems he ran boot$nuke and that solved his problem. Tried doing it but doesent work on my system it crashes. I do have Acronis True Image and am currently running drive cleanser but that takes like forever so while im waiting for that seeing if i can pick your brains.

Am i on the right track?
Any feedback would be appreciated... Thanks

[\dev\goat]

I had this happen to me a few hours ago actually. Whenever I would add a new partition table and format with a new "empty" partition, the old raid partition would magically appear back again... I fixed it by formatting with a random fs ( i chose ntfs ) and then formatting again ext4. Extra 20 seconds of work but it stopped the old partition from popping up.

[RGone]

so i pull drives = Since you do not mention going into the raid bios and 'breaking' the array, we assume you did not and thus your issues. You should always break the array when removing drives from a raid array. If the array is not broken you can use the drive manufactures software to write all ones or zeros to the drive and that will overwrite the array information off of the drive and make the drive as if it were never in a raid array.

PS: there is no low level format anymore for late style HDDs and if you could find a piece of software to begin a true low level format, the drive would likely be ruined.

[mk57nato]

Lol yea i know there is no real low lvl format, figured drive wiping is close to it since simple partition and format doesent seem to do it.

Yea i messed up and didnt break the array.

But doing a drive wipe should fix it then? Im using Acronis drive cleanser.

Is there a faster way, even using the fast method i see this taking at least 4 days to wipe 2x2tb drives? There has got to be a faster way.

Maybe re-raid them, then break them properly?

[RGone]

Maybe re-raid them, then break them properly? = Yes if you have the same board just hook them back up and go into raid GUI and break the array. If something causes them not to show as still raided...then make the array and reboot and break the array. That should do it.

Full erase which writes 1s or 0s to the drive depending on which software is used, will take some time for sure.

[WarDad]

Hard Drive Size Matters
A 2TB total capacity is compatible with standard MBR boot drive formatting. The new GPT formatting supports larger data drive capacities but it's not always backwards compatible. If your RAID exceeds 2TB then do some homework at your motherboard and OS forums. Your SATA controller may not support GPT, but it might provide a work around by partitioning multiple RAID 0 drives on the hard drives.

I've read that W7 supports GPT, but it takes W7-64 to boot from it.
BTW: Did you do a full format or a quick format? Sounds like \dev\goat has a workaround.

[mk57nato]

Lol at this point im confused.

Redid the raid 0 array showed the 4tb array, rebooted started loading windows. Got to the point of windows making its partition. Shut down and rebooted and broke/deleted the raid array.
Rebooted and set all bios settings back to normal non raid.
Rebooted and start to set up windows. get to normal partition spot set it up as 2tb and start installing windows.
windows gets to about 49% unpacking and and says missing files.

Before i was waiting on disk wipe used to fail about 29%.

So i figure maybe my windows 7 x64 went bad (was a burned iso legaly bought through technet). So i toss in my vista disk for giggles.... loads and unpacks completely and gets to update section... so i shut down.

Ok at this point it would seem win7x64 disk went bad. But... reburned iso still same problem.

also if it was 7x64 disk... why did it used to fail at 29% and after letting disk wipe run overnight now it fails at 49%.

Either way running diskpart right now and doing a clear all on 1 of the 2tb drives. I figure ill actually let it finish this time and see what happens.

I will post back after diskpart finishes and see if anything changes.... lol will probably take till tomorrow night to finish...

Gonna feel really stupid if it ends up just being the iso image went bad somehow.

Btw. i used acronis to clone the drive the first time. If fails everytime trying to clone back to the 2tb drive. So if its just the windows 7x64 iso, and the drive is fine. Why wont it let me clone it back? lol

Fyi. mb is msi 890fxa-gd 70, Hard Drives are hitachi 2tbx2 1tbx1 all drives are in 800d

[mk57nato]

Well i am a fool... Was a bad windows disk. Guess i could have saved myself a ton of time trying it in my laptop a long time ago... But hey repartitioning and formatting hard drives over and over and over... etc.. IS FUN right?