Samsung 830 RAID in Windows 7

[jbseven]

I've just added a 2nd 830 to my system and am tyring in vain to install Windows 7 SP1 on the raided volume.

Unfortunately, windows install keeps saying it cannot find any drives (either the 2 830s or the 2 3TB drives!).

All hard drives are connected to the Intel Controller Sata ports on the motherboard.
I've set the Intel Controller to RAID mode and set the drive type to ssd in BIOS
I've set up RAID 0 on the 2 830s and RAID 1 on the 2 3TB drives
I've tried using the latest intel controller driver (and the old one provided on the asrock cd) during windows install but it still does not detect any drives.

I'm stuck on what to do now- the next step is a BIOS update but thats a major pita I want to avoid (manually setting overclocks and timings all over again!)

A little help please someone?

Motherboard: ASRock Fatality Pro Gen 3
Hard Drives: Samsung 830 x2
Seagate 3TB x2

 

[jbseven]

Using Diskpart in the windows 7 setup, both disks are detected (the raid 0 disk and the raid 1 disk).
I've tried the following:

-select disk 0>clean all
-select disk 0>create partition primary
-select disk 0>select volume 1>format quick

Now there is an NTFS partition on the Raided 830's but still no joy. Can't seem to reach the 'configure disks' screen of the windows 7 installation procedure.

 

[popatim]

Since you're saying the installation can't see the drives I'm assuming you made it to the "Where do you want to install windows to?" screen. Is that correct?

SSD's are on red Intel sata ports 0 & 1 (ie - sata3_0 and sata3_1 and NOT the red sata3_A1 or Sata3_A2) ?

From here you need to click the load drivers button and load the F6 pre-installation drivers.
http://66.226.78.21/downloadsite/drivers/Intel/SATA/Floppy_Win7-64_Win7_Vista64_Vista_XP64_XP(v10.8.0.1003).zip

If you've done all that then I would assume you did not do the uefi install of win7. Unless you've put your motherbd's bios into legacy mode you would need to press the boot options function key (often f11/f12) and boot the uefi option; not the normal win7 usb/dvd option. After that a uefi install is basically the same as an mbr.

 

[jbseven]

Thanks popatim. But I'd done all that.

Turns out the problem was the external usb hard drive that had the windows installation on it. No bad sectors or anything, but for some reason it wouldn't install from the drive (though I've installed it several times before from the drive.)

Thanks!

 

[popatim]

Well glad you got it sorted out. Odd problem though 🙁