Vista install with multiple RAID arrays failed (SOLVED))

[Captante]

Posting this in the hope that sharing my experience which didn't work, somone will either come up with what I did wrong, or at least be spared the trouble of doing somthing similar!

First, my main rig is an Asus Nforce 590 SLI Crosshair, A64 5000+ @ 2.8ghz, EVGA 8800GTX, Creative X-Fi, 2 GB Mushkin XP2-8500 @800mhz with 2 optical drives & most importantly I think, 2 x 2 drive RAID arrays. *(rock-solid stable for months under XP alone)

Array# 1 w/XP Pro = 2 x 320gb Seagate's mirrored & set up as boot partition in RAID BIOS
Array #2 w/no OS = 2 x 500gb WD's mirrored (formatted only)

Both arrays were running fine on XP and when I attempted to install Vista Ultimate (Upgrade) this evening everything appeared to go smoothly.. so smoothly in fact that deep down I knew somthing had to go wrong... anyway, setup seemed to complete without a hitch with XP on the 320gb array & Vista on the 500gb array, however on the final reboot which should have loaded Vista the PC froze with no error message.

After a couple minutes of no HD activity, I knew I was hosed so I hit reset& this time was greeted with a menu that looked like a dual-boot OS-selection screen, but the only choices were to load previous Windows version(XP) or to rollback Vista installation... the worst thisng was that neither of these options worked & both only resulted in rebooting to the same screen... it seems Vista could't start because it couldn't find a file it needed (wrote the name down but I can't find it) & upon further examination it seems thst Vista setup somhow trashed my RAID array by combining the 2 seperate RAID 1's consisting of 2 drives each into 4 arrays consisting of one drive each (!!!) & had managed to corrupt the data they contained in the process.

Its not like I lost any data because I have 3 full backup3 on two external HD's & on another PC running XP Pro on RAID 0+1, but it certainly was a frustrating way to spend 3 hours only to end up restoring a backup image!

Anybody with any helpful suggestions feel free to speak up, otherwise if you have a similar setup, proceed with caution.... btw if I think of any important details I left out I'll update this post later ... I have to sleep now.


Update / Edit: Funny how in EVERY other forum I posted the solution to my problem the first thing that was posted afterwards was "thanks!" & if they did disagree with some aspect of what I said they explained why in a manner intended to provide additional assistance in return, not to "prove me wrong" ... I don't mind being corrected if I make a mistake & in fact enjoy learning new information, but I think its pretty obvious why these forums have a LOT fewer people willing to be helpful then they used to... you arn't going to hurt my feelings (LOL), but if this were the first time I posted here, it very likely would also be the last.


SEE THE SOLUTION IN 5TH POST DOWN

 

[RebateMonger]

I'm curious. Did you run the Vista Upgrade Advisor on your system before trying the upgrade? Supposedly, if Vista doesn't have the right drivers for the RAID controller, it'll say so in the Advisor.

Congrats on having backups.

 

[Captante]

Actuallly no I didn't ... after years of worthless MS help-files I guess I skipped the one I should have looked at huh? I'll read through it before I try again & update this thread with my results, although it still seems really weird that the actual RAID BIOS got screwed up ... not seeing the array like XP used to do if you forgot to hit F6 & install the RAID drivers is one thing, but thats quite another!

Also believe me ... I'm only as anal as I am now about backups after learning the hard way a few times!

 

[RebateMonger]

Well, I saw the "Vista Update Advisor" mentioned elsewhere concerning RAID. I have no idea if it actually works. I know that Upgrade Advisor said my Toshiba laptop was fine for the upgrade, but the actual Upgrade fails in one minute, complaining that the Toshiba's BIOS isn't fully ACPI-compliant. So much for the "Upgrade Advisor".

 

[Captante]

Well it looks like I've found at least part (my bet is a BIG part) of the problem ... according to the update adviser there is no compatible NV-RAID driver for the NForce 500 seris chipset available for Vista... I still can't figure out how on earth Vista setup got into the BIOS & modified my 2x2 drive RAID 1 arrays into 4x1 RAID 1 arrays though!

Anyway, looks like what I'll have to do is either dual-boot the old fashioned way (swapping power cables) or wait a few weeks for Nvidia & MS to get it together. Really theres NO excuse for there to be no SATA-RAID driver available for the AMD 590 SLI in Vista setup ... I can't believe I'm the only person running this configuration for goodness sake!

 

[Captante]

Well after some help from the guys on another forum called Pro-Networks I was able to successfully complete the install by using SATA RAID drivers which I manuallly extracted from a driver posted on the Asus download page for my motherboard.

I copied the required drivers onto a flash drive & (for those who don't know how) loaded them manually using the "load drivers" tab during setup which takes the place of the "press F6" option in XP ... both the SATA RAID & the SATA storage drivers are required just like in XP setup & they were in a sub-directory called IDE.

Although these drivers are listed on the Asus site for the Crosshair 590SLI, they should work fine for any 590 or 570 SLI (of course YMMV ... use at your own risk!) so if you need them yourself, head over there & download away. (Asus posted them in a zipped format like they used to do when you had to upgrade maunally so no special utility is required to get to the files)

Asus/Nvidia Vista 32-bit NvRAID driver

 

[MJGlo]

Originally posted by: Captante
I copied the required drivers onto a flash drive & (for those who don't know how) loaded them manually using the "load drivers" tab during setup which takes the place of the "press F6" option in XP

So there is no F5 option for loading RAID drivers with Vista, it is replaced by a "load drivers" tab?

Thanks Mike

 

[Nothinman]

I still can't figure out how on earth Vista setup got into the BIOS & modified my 2x2 drive RAID 1 arrays into 4x1 RAID 1 arrays though!

I would blame it on the fact that those crappy BIOS assisted RAID controllers don't do real RAID so if it loaded the generic nVidia SATA driver it would see 4 seperate drives. If it really called them 4 broken RAID1 mirrors instead of just calling them 4 disks that's a little more odd, but wouldn't surprise me givin the high craptasticness of those controller's RAID.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I still can't figure out how on earth Vista setup got into the BIOS & modified my 2x2 drive RAID 1 arrays into 4x1 RAID 1 arrays though!

I would blame it on the fact that those crappy BIOS assisted RAID controllers don't do real RAID so if it loaded the generic nVidia SATA driver it would see 4 seperate drives. If it really called them 4 broken RAID1 mirrors instead of just calling them 4 disks that's a little more odd, but wouldn't surprise me givin the high craptasticness of those controller's RAID.

The consensus opinion of people on the Pro-Networks & Asus forums was that setup either loaded a RAID driver for an NForce 4 which sort of worked and/or overwrote the MBR during setup... seems to be working fine with the driver installed manually from the Asus site though.

Originally posted by: MJGlo

Originally posted by: Captante
I copied the required drivers onto a flash drive & (for those who don't know how) loaded them manually using the "load drivers" tab during setup which takes the place of the "press F6" option in XP

So there is no F5 option for loading RAID drivers with Vista, it is replaced by a "load drivers" tab?

Thanks Mike

I only have the upgrade version so I havn't seen exactly what it looks like when you boot from the DVD to install, but when installing from Windows XP, you select custom install & have it check online for driver updates then you'll come to a screen which has a very small tab... actually more like a link called "load drivers" (I can't find a link to a screenshot sorry) ... click on the link & it will allow you to browse to the location of the driver (s) you need to load... you can use a CD, floppy or flash-drive to do this.

 

[Nothinman]

The consensus opinion of people on the Pro-Networks & Asus forums was that setup either loaded a RAID driver for an NForce 4 which sort of worked and/or overwrote the MBR during setup... seems to be working fine with the driver installed manually from the Asus site though.

The MBR has nothing to do with the RAID configuration, it just contains the partition table and the initial boot code which usually just amounts to "find the first active partition and execute it's boot recored" unless you installed a 3rd party boot manager.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The consensus opinion of people on the Pro-Networks & Asus forums was that setup either loaded a RAID driver for an NForce 4 which sort of worked and/or overwrote the MBR during setup... seems to be working fine with the driver installed manually from the Asus site though.

The MBR has nothing to do with the RAID configuration, it just contains the partition table and the initial boot code which usually just amounts to "find the first active partition and execute it's boot recored" unless you installed a 3rd party boot manager.

Actually I'd think overwriting or incorrectly modifying the MBR/partition table could easily result in an un-bootable system which was the ultimate result in this case & Vista replaces XP's boot loader with one of its own which works differently which is why if you re-install XP after setting up a Vista dual-boot, you will lose access to Vista & have to repair it, however I'm pretty sure that the driver was the culprit too ... its still very strange the way it modified the arrays in the BIOS though... regardless of the driver installed in Windows that shouldn't have happened.

 

[Nothinman]

Actually I'd think overwriting or incorrectly modifying the MBR/partition table could easily result in an un-bootable system which was the ultimate result in this case

No, you said Vista showed your 4 disks as 4 seperate, broken mirrors which has absolutely nothing to do with the MBR.

its still very strange the way it modified the arrays in the BIOS though..

But it didn't, at least it shouldn't have, if you boot a Linux disc it'll show you 4 seperate disks as well because the RAID controller is worthless and the real RAID work is done in software in the driver.

 

[Captante]

All I know for certain is that the default Nvidia SATA-RAID driver Vista tried to install during setup trashed the RAID 1 arrays in some way, so if anyone plans to install Vista on an existing NForce 570/590 SLI with a RAID array (regardless of said arrays technical merits!) & wants to avoid the same headache, I strongly suggest they install the working drivers from the Asus site manually during setup until MS adds a working version to the online setup updates.

Since I agree that its very unlikely that Vista actually modified the BIOS in any way & you say that no information pertaining to the configuration of the RAID array is stored in the MBR, I think it becomes pretty obvious that somthing on the hard-drives was modified which was the cause here & it was done within the final stages of Vista setup ... if you have a better (& specific) explanation of what this was beyond the installation of the default Nvidia driver I'd be interested to hear it.


Update / Edit: Funny how in EVERY other forum I posted the solution to my problem the first thing that was posted afterwards was "thanks!" & if they did disagree with some aspect of what I said they explained why in a manner intended to provide additional assistance in return, not to "prove me wrong" ... I don't mind being corrected if I make a mistake & in fact enjoy learning new information, but I think its pretty obvious why these forums have a LOT fewer people willing to be helpful then they used to... you arn't going to hurt my feelings (LOL), but if this were the first time I posted here, it very likely would also be the last.

 

[Nothinman]

Since I agree that its very unlikely that Vista actually modified the BIOS in any way & you say that no information pertaining to the configuration of the RAID array is stored in the MBR, I think it becomes pretty obvious that somthing on the hard-drives was modified which was the cause here & it was done within the final stages of Vista setup ... if you have a better (& specific) explanation of what this was beyond the installation of the default Nvidia driver I'd be interested to hear it.

From what I can tell most of those fake RAID devices put their metadata at or near the end of the drive, at least those that the Linux dmraid layer supports. I find it a little bit odd that just loading the non-RAID driver would actually write to the device on it's own, but MS is known for doing questionable things behind the user's back so it's not out of the realm of possibility. For a while now Windows has reserved ~8M at the end of the drive incase you decide to convert the volume to a dynamic disk since it stores the GPT down there, but you would have had to partition the drive during setup for that to happen.

 

[ingeborgdot]

I;ll be contacting you as I have some questions on this.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Captante
Update / Edit: Funny how in EVERY other forum I posted the solution to my problem the first thing that was posted afterwards was "thanks!" & if they did disagree with some aspect of what I said they explained why in a manner intended to provide additional assistance in return, not to "prove me wrong" ... I don't mind being corrected if I make a mistake & in fact enjoy learning new information, but I think its pretty obvious why these forums have a LOT fewer people willing to be helpful then they used to... you arn't going to hurt my feelings (LOL), but if this were the first time I posted here, it very likely would also be the last.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: ingeborgdot
I;ll be contacting you as I have some questions on this.

Replied to your PM ... I'll be happy to help if I can. (keep in mind however that my PC is on 24/7 & most of the time it'll look like I'm online but I'm really not.)

You can e-mail me directly too if its easier.

 

[Smilin]

They probably said "thanks" because you were telling them something new. Not so here. Seeing four separate jbods should have been your first clue what was happening.

What happened for you in Vista would also have happened in XP I believe. Without providing a driver the inbox SATA/ATA driver would have loaded and the same problem would have occured. You wouldn't have tried this in XP without providing a driver but you did in Vista for some reason. Folks here would also have told you to do a clean install had you asked first.

Sorry you didn't have a good 'first post' type of experience.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: Smilin
They probably said "thanks" because you were telling them something new. Not so here. Seeing four separate jbods should have been your first clue what was happening.

What happened for you in Vista would also have happened in XP I believe. Without providing a driver the inbox SATA/ATA driver would have loaded and the same problem would have occured. You wouldn't have tried this in XP without providing a driver but you did in Vista for some reason. Folks here would also have told you to do a clean install had you asked first.

Sorry you didn't have a good 'first post' type of experience.

They said "thanks" out of courtesy & for posting a thread that might help somone else ... some did point out that they could have told me if I'd asked ahead of time btw though & I must point out that nobody here on AT offered up a solution until after I'd already found one myself.

Not like this is my first post here by the way... been hanging around AT since pre-Fusetalk days, I just spend most of my time in video or OT so I've got a pretty thick skin & won't hesitate to post here again or to comment if I feel somone is out of line for that matter, but if I just wanted to have a pointless argument I'd take it to P&N!

Anyway, I figured why not try the upgrade route because I had all my data backed up & all I really lost was 3 hours of time, further if I'd had the Asus-supplied driver on the first try the upgrade would almost certainly have gone fine, although I will usually prefer a clean install myself. My only mistake was not doing my homework before I started instead of before the 2ed try.

As for XP with software-RAID ... I never tried it in a dual-boot without a third-party boot manager that was XP compatible installed first on Win2k so I can't comment on exactly what would have happened with the incorrect driver installed, although as I recall (its been awhile) I had to hide the Win2k partition from XP completely to make it work at all so my guess is that it would only have said "setup cannot find any hard-drives.. hit F3 to exit" or somthing along those lines if I failed to load a driver at setup.