Raid 1 corrupts the OS?

[Shadowcalen1]

I have been building a PC for a friend with 1 250gb 850 evo as the boot drive and 2 1tb wd blues drives. However whenever I set the bios to raid, the OS corrupts unless I install windows 10 first. If I install windows 7 then raid, the os loads but most programs will crash the computer. If I install windows 7, upgrade to windows 10, then raid, I get a boot device not found error (however windows 10 is recognized as it starts loading it before giving this error). If I install windows 10 then raid, it works without issue, only issue is I have a windows 7 key and it wont let me use it in windows 10. Any advice as to how to get the computer to work with raid would be greatly appreciated.
Specs,
i5 4590
msi z97 pc mate
2x wd blue 1tb drives
850 evo 250gb drive
2x8gb gskills sniper ram
650 watt powersupply
Boot mode is legacy+UEIF
Sata mode is raid

Note I am currently stuck with the windows 10 installed with windows 7 update, and would prefer figuring out how to make it so the PC will find its boot device.

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

Set the UEFI to RAID first then install the OS to the SSD then build the WD Blue RAID 1 array. You cannot change the disk type after OS installation without modifying registry. i.e. install in IDE then Change BIOS to AHCI the drivers will be wrong and just will not work.

 

[andy_Man]

Set the UEFI to RAID first then install the OS to the SSD then build the WD Blue RAID 1 array. You cannot change the disk type after OS installation without modifying registry. i.e. install in IDE then Change BIOS to AHCI the drivers will be wrong and just will not work.

+1
Also, in raid 1 if there are any drive problems you will lose all data. Keep anything important backed up.

 

[Shadowcalen1]

Set the UEFI to RAID first then install the OS to the SSD then build the WD Blue RAID 1 array. You cannot change the disk type after OS installation without modifying registry. i.e. install in IDE then Change BIOS to AHCI the drivers will be wrong and just will not work.

Unfortunately I cannot install windows 7 if raid is enabled, and it seemed to work when I switched the mode after the windows 10 install.

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

RAID 1 is mirroring you will not loose your data in the event of drive failure but you will loose your data if you are in RAID 0. Are you using an external RAID card or the integrated RAID in the PCH? You should be able to install windows 7 in RAID mode if you are using the PCH as I have done it many times. Aare you creating the single disk RAID volume for the SSD? The SSD will be in RAID mode if using the PCH. If using an external RAID card you will need to install drivers for it before you can install the OS.

Why are you installing windows 7 first then upgrading to 10, has the computer already been upgraded to 10 and activated? if so do not install 7 first just install 10.

 

[Shadowcalen1]

RAID 1 is mirroring you will not loose your data in the event of drive failure but you will loose your data if you are in RAID 0. Are you using an external RAID card or the integrated RAID in the PCH? You should be able to install windows 7 in RAID mode if you are using the PCH as I have done it many times. Aare you creating the single disk RAID volume for the SSD? The SSD will be in RAID mode if using the PCH. If using an external RAID card you will need to install drivers for it before you can install the OS.

Why are you installing windows 7 first then upgrading to 10, has the computer already been upgraded to 10 and activated? if so do not install 7 first just install 10.

I am using a integrated raid solution, all I want to do is raid the 2 1tb drives for redundancy as they will be acting as sort of a nas. This is a office pc with not huge requirements for storage, the reason for 1tb is that it is fairly inexpensive. Windows 10 wont accept my key despite having windows 7 upgraded with the same key, dont know why. I dont know what PCH is.

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

Was windows 7 upgraded to 10 and activated on this pc allready?

As for the RAID i understand what you want to do and the hardware you are using to do it. It is capable of doing what you want to do. It is just about getting the settings right and preping the array.

The PCH platform controller hub (what used to be the south bridge) contrills the SATA ports.

You cannot put the SSD in AHCI or IDE then change it to RAID it will not work correctly.

You have to put the Motherboard into RAID first using the UEFI. Have just the SSD in at first. You will then have to create a 1 disk array after you pit the MB in RAID. You can then install the OS as normal but you have to create the one disk array. All of your other disks i.e. ODD will also be in RAID however they will work just fine.

Until recently i had almost the exact same configuration you are talking about on a z77 board just a couple chipset generations older. It does work.

What do you get when you try to install the ssd when in RAID?

 

[Shadowcalen1]

Depending on what iso I use to install windows with the raid onwill ither flat out say it cannot install on this machine, or Windows 7 will install , however you are unable to open troubbleshooter, task manager, device manager, paint, as well as a bunch of random stuff without getting the "windows cannot preform this action" error. You can open windows internet explorer, and file manager without issue, but it would not connect to the internet (though in hindsight, that was possably due to a missing driver). I tried just doing windows 10 after I did the upgrade, and it did not accept the key..

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

I am not asking about keys. After installing 7 and upgrading to windows 10 was windows 10 activated?

 

[Shadowcalen1]

I am not asking about keys. After installing 7 and upgrading to windows 10 was windows 10 activated?

Yes

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

Great! To install windows 10 directly without upgrading from 7 do not use a product key, any product key, just install 10. It will activate its self without a key. The activation process on upgrades is controlled at the server level and is tied to your computers hardware configuration. Once the already windows 10 activated hardware configuration try's to activate the same windows 10 version it will automatically reauthorize the computer with out a key. It only works this way for the 7, 8.1 to 10 upgrades. Windows 10 keys will need to be used every time but in many cases are still tied to the hardware of the original activation.

 

[navalweaponsofficer]

Now back to the RAID piece. Ill try and explain it in a different way. In the UEFI configure the storage settings to RAID, then save and reboot. You will then need to go into the RAID configuration (not in the UEFI and not in windows) I is just a mostly text based configuration tool. try using (ctrl+I) to enter it you will see it on the screen. This is where you build your one disk and later two disk array. Don't build arrays in windows software RAID in disk management do it all through the RAID configuration Utility.

 

[Shadowcalen1]

Great! To install windows 10 directly without upgrading from 7 do not use a product key, any product key, just install 10. It will activate its self without a key. The activation process on upgrades is controlled at the server level and is tied to your computers hardware configuration. Once the already windows 10 activated hardware configuration try's to activate the same windows 10 version it will automatically reauthorize the computer with out a key. It only works this way for the 7, 8.1 to 10 upgrades. Windows 10 keys will need to be used every time but in many cases are still tied to the hardware of the original activation.

I dont know why, but that doesn't work at all for me. Just a little while ago my laptops OS crapped out to the point where I had to clean install. I dont know if it was because I used a torrent to download the OS the first time, (The windows 10 creation tool diddnt work on my other pc) but I ended up having to install a cracked version of 7 and upgrade to windows 10. When I first upgraded my laptop to windows 10 (from 8.1) I thought I had realy screwed up because I did not record my key and it would not activate despite going though the upgrade. It wasent untill running it unactivated for a week while I figured out what to do did the computer crash, reboot several times (each time with a error) then load and it was activated. Basically the auto activate has never worked for me without issues.
Its worth noting that I did try windows 10 install after the windows 10 update.

 

[Shadowcalen1]

Now back to the RAID piece. Ill try and explain it in a different way. In the UEFI configure the storage settings to RAID, then save and reboot. You will then need to go into the RAID configuration (not in the UEFI and not in windows) I is just a mostly text based configuration tool. try using (ctrl+I) to enter it you will see it on the screen. This is where you build your one disk and later two disk array. Don't build arrays in windows software RAID in disk management do it all through the RAID configuration Utility.

As for this, this is exactly what I did.

 

[Shadowcalen1]

The answer is apparently to load raid drivers during the OS install.