Clean install of Windows 7 on Raid1 failure

Question

My Dimension E510 was purchased with a 2-disk Raid1 configuration, XP Media Edition.

Wanting to extend the use of this system (with the April 2014 support deadline approaching) I purchased a copy of Windows 7 Professional, and two 1TB Western Digital drives.

1. After installing the 2 "blank" drives, I started the system and hit Ctrl-I to setup the Raid1 array.

2. I inserted my Win7 installation disk, rebooted, and began the installation. (The installation recognized a "single" drive, which I believe is reasonable since I had configured the Raid1 array).

3. The installation seemed to proceed normally. Went through the "coping files...", etc., and restarted.

4, After the restart, the installation continued for a while, in the "completing the installation" part. (The progress bar at the bottom of the screen was nearing the end.)

5. Then, a message box was displayed, saying that 'Windows could not be installed on this hardware configuration'.

Is there some way to complete this installation successfully?? The system ran well under Windows XP. (I had rebuilt a single failed drive once, but never needed to reinstall the OS).

It if is, in fact, not possible to install Win7 with Raid1 on this machine, I'll break the array and complete the installation.

Just thought that I could get a little faster performance with the Raid1 array.

Any help on this would be appreciated!

theflash1932 · Accepted Answer

RAID 1 isn't going to give you better performance ... it is intended to protect your data from exactly what you experienced with the single failed drive (so it did its job).

The issue is not Windows 7 on a RAID 1 ... it is most likely a driver issue:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2466753

You might try loading the drivers for Vista x86 (supported on the E510 - Windows 7 is not officially supported, so Dell has no drivers for Windows 7, but we can get one from somewhere else if this one doesn't work):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/dimension-5150x?driverId=XDM29&osCode=WLH&fileId=2731101603&languageCode=en&categoryId=SA

rbolewitz · Answer

Thank you for the clear and concise info. Much appreciated after spending a day trying to wade through many opinions and confusing posts.

I had tried installing the drive from Dell that you referenced (contained in R173412.exe), but when I browsed to the unpacked files location at the beginning to the installation procedure, no driver was recognized as being "compatible". When I de-selected the option to 'view only compatible drivers', I could see the files, but did not want to take a chance on trying to use one of them.

Thanks also for the info that Raid1 will not yield better performance. I think that I'll simply go ahead with the non-Raid installation, and use the second drive as a backup. A little extra effort to protect data, but certainly not a big deal.

Thanks again!

theflash1932 · Answer

You could do a Windows Backup image to the second disk - very easy to recover - not quite as seamless as RAID 1, but probably the next best thing.

If you wanted to try one more, you could try these drivers:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=23060&ProductFamily=Software+Products&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%c2%ae+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel%c2%ae+RST)&lang=eng

Windows General

Clean install of Windows 7 on Raid1 failure

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