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General discussion

Need help with Dual boot Vista/XP and Raid 0

by creflo Sep 22, 2008 11:47AM PDT

Hi,

I had Vista installed on a Raid 0 array with an extra HD for storage. I decided to use this extra storage HD to install XP on so I could set up a dual boot system between two different HD setups, one raid with vista, and one single drive with XP.

I unplugged my raid HDs from the power and sata cables then proceeded to install XP on my single storage HD. After a few attempts due to sata driver issues I finally got a smooth clean install of XP on a single HD. I re-connected my raid drives that had Vista 64 installed on it. I rebooted and got an error message: DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER, which I did of course. Vista loaded and showed my partitioned Raid 0 array but no operating system is shown. It should show Vista 64. So I disabled my Raid option in Bios and XP booted up no problem. So now my question is...how do I get vista to boot back up on my Raid stripe?

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RAID

by Renegade Knight Sep 24, 2008 4:43AM PDT

If I follow you correctly.

Vista things it's installed on a RAID 0 configuration. Meaning both drives act as one large drive. Vista has a RAID Driver to see this drive correctly (especially when you install vista like I just this this morning).

You installed XP but uhooked a drive to do so, breaking your RAID configuration so to speak.

So now want Vista to Book with a RAID 0, and XP to boot using No RAID at all.

I'm not sure that's really possible. You have removed half of what Vista is expecting to see and put XP on it in another partition. Your RAID 0 is likely broken beyond recovery.

The right way is to use your RAID 0 configuation and set up a dual boot arrangment using partitions on the single hard dive that Vista and XP can see. Each only expects to work within it's own partition and each see's the RAID 0 configuration like they should.

You may be able to boot from either drive if you turn off your RAID entirly, but I don't know that for sure.

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