Greg K — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:49:11 +0000

Ok well a little update for anyone else who may come across this issue.

I noticed on trying to install Linux, although it said about having problems with using a raid drive, if I went into expert mode, it seemed like it would let me use the partition that already existed with windows, so I figured I'd toss in the WinXP disk again, and let it create another primary partition with windows, then I would blow it away an put on linux.. (that ended up not working).

However, when I got to where you select where to install windows, to my amazement, it asked if I just wanted to repair C:\WINDOWS

What the heck? when I boot to windows, Windows is on Drive I:.....

I guess as long as a partiton on the RAID already exists, it will be the first drive letter before IDE DVD drives or USB card readers. So I went and did a reinstall of windows, using drive C: this time. It worked, when all done windows was in fact on C:.

I decided to test this, I blew away the raid settings, re-created the raid settings, and reinstalled windows... Drive I: again.
So I again redid the raid settings, let it try to set up as I:\WINDOWS to create the initial partition. When the system did the reboot, instead of letting Setup continue, I had it start over again, andonce again, since the partition already existed let it be C:.... Didn't need to buy a SATA DVD drive after all. Oh well, I'll keep it on the shelf.

So now I have properly set up windows (ok stop laughing you linux/mac users) on Drive C.

Now for the linux gurus here.... Do you know what I can do to get it to properly work with the RAID controller listed on the other post here? I would still like to get a copy of that running as well on my system.

Thank you for your help.

-Greg

Greg K — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 08:02:49 +0000

Sigh, I tried to also install Suse Linux, but it warned against installing on a RAID setup, saying the raid settings and all data on the raid drives would be lost

Since this system recognizes USB drives right from boot up as a SCSI drive, I was able to have linux install on a 80 gig USB drive. However after GRUB installed, I had to manually add an entry for windows so I could boot to windows again, and then it all crashes out unless the USB drive is plugged in at startup... LOL

This is not a permanent option, this system is too danged fast to bottleneck it on a USB drive

I'm playing around with different things now, since I will most likely be reinstalling windows. It looks like even though I cannot select the physical drives, it will let me pick the partition made on the raid drives when windows was setup, so going to see about putting linux there...

-Greg

Monkeyboy — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:57:11 +0000

I'm pretty sure that you can select the dive letter when you install XP. I remember the last time I did it I just shot through the install process and ended up with all the system files on drive F (I've got 2 hard drives, dvd-rw, and a couple of card readers). I just reinstalled XP and made sure the correct drive letter was selected the second time.

There is a way to change the drive letters without reinstalling a believe but I couldn't get it to work... also I didn't want to risk messing up any registries e.t.c. which would no doubt cause a major problem months down the line when I've got lots of important stuff installed on my PC. Three cheers for Windows!

Greg K — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:22:02 +0000

haven't been able to find much info on a way around this. I went and ordered 2 320gig SATA drives to use as data drives, and got a SATA DVD ROM for $20. Hopefully with that hooked up, my SATA 160's will register as drive C

-Greg