Windows – Can’t install windows – setup can’t see the hard disk (RAID1)

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I am trying to install win8 x64 on my machine. The machine has two hard drives connected in RAID1 I have just created : image

I have inserted the USB containing the Windows installation media and when it comes to the point where I have to select a drive, there is no such found. With Hiren boot USB I entered in XP mini, where I created partition from the unallocated hard drive (NTFS, Active)image

When I try to install it again, the hard is still not visible.

Then I went to the manufacturer website – motherboard is lenovo (is6xn) with c206 chipset and I downloaded all storage drivers from here link. When I attempted to load them during the installation and it discovered just one of the driver image, after the driver installation, the hard is still not visible. I

I have also tried these: link, still the hard is not visible image.

These did not good either: link

During the installation I started command prompt with shift+F10 and using diskpart > list disk, no drives were displayed.

Just to add the using Windows7 installation USB and the result is the same – no hard is visible, so the problem is not in the installation media.

Perhaps it has something to do with RAID?

Best Answer

You need to download the drivers for the Adaptec RAID Controller and copy them to a flash drive. Plug in both the flash drive with the drivers and with your Windows installation media. On the Partition Select screen, click the "Load Driver" or "Have Driver" button and load the RAID drivers for the controller card.

Related Solutions

Windows 7 Install: No drives were found

Note that running these commands will break any previous OS and data on disk.

After you get past the language selection, select Repair, open Command Prompt and type the following commands (pressing Enter after each one):

diskpart

list disk

select disk <number>

clean

Restart the system, and now you should be able to complete the installation.

Can I plug a single hard drive into the “SATA RAID1” socket

With current Intel chipsets that have included RAID, I normally expect drives to be in AHCI mode even with RAID enabled until the drive is manually added to a RAID volume. I'm not certain how your motherboard/controller manages it.

In the event that it actually won't let you use a drive on a 'RAID' port as a normal AHCI drive, you should try installing the SATA drivers provided by ASUS here. It could be a 'FakeRaid' port, which would require the OS to have the appropriate drivers before RAID works.

And yes, single drive RAID is possible. Not normally done, since it provides absolutely no advantages over AHCI, but if your motherboard demands drives on that port to be in a RAID array, it is possible.

Possibly relevant is this:

He wanted to install an OS on the RAID drive.

Advice given:

So I do see a Marvell module. It is possible you would need to configure a single disk as a "stripe of one disk" or something similar, then do an F6 install of a RAID driver, to get it to work.

Now, when I look in the e2736 M2V user manual, it says:

"Do not install the operating system with the device connected to the Marvell® 88SE6121 Serial ATA connector."

So that is not an encouraging sign. It implies Asus doesn't think it will work.

As Bill said, give it a try, but there are no guarantees it will work. It all depends on things like the RAID setup in the BIOS, the Marvell driver and what it is capable of, and so on.

Final result:

I have installed Windows via the SATA ports connected to the VIA southbridge, with no problems. (also had to swap the HD, the 160 Gbyte had some problems, now have an 250gbyte SATA)
After that I installed the marvell drivers (drive still connected to the southbridge SATA).
After all this I connected the SATA driver to the Marvell connector (the internal one) and it tried to reboot: Windows logo showed up but somehow the SBOD (the well known bleu screen) showed up.
My conclusion is: Booting from the Marvell connected harddrive is possible, as long you have the proper SATA drivers for it.

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