Installing XP to a Dynamic volume or Striped volume.

Hi,

I'm trying to install xp to an 80gb striped volume.

It won't work because it is not a boot volume. The diskpart 'retain' won't because its not basic.

Is there a way around this?

Can I just change it back to a basic disk, install xp and then convert to dynamic, then make it striped?

Heres some info on my system:

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/2083/image1qm.jpg

Cheers.

 

Is this hardware based raid you refer to? Yes, I understand a hardware raid is really only software raid in reality compared to real raid cards.

I ask because if you create raid through software on XP, you have created dynamic discs to do so. Dynamic raid in my experience is only visible to the OS, and not to anything else. Thus, you cannot install because the dynamic discs are dependent upon an underlying OS to be useable. Thus the need for integrated raid chips even though there is not much difference between them.

When I install any OS, regardless of raid or not, I physically unplug all harddiscs except the one(s) I am installing on. You don't have to do this, but it removes a few little problems that can arise from time to time and often get overlooked as to why some things work or don't work as expected.

Sul.

Edit: forgot to mention, that when using dynamic discs, some things will not even see the dynamic discs. For example, I created a mirrored raid array using dynamic discs in XP (required some modifications of a few files ) and found a program I use called Overdisk, which simply displays free space on drives, would not see the dynamic discs at all.

 

It's a non-raid setup, just sataII controllers.

I think I realise now that it is not possible.

Cheers.

 

Your best bet is to buy an add-in card that is raid capable. They are pretty cheap these days. Then you can install to the drives on that card and boot from them.

Dynamic discs, I gave up on. They are just not robust enough for what I wanted to use them for. However, if you just want to put a couple drives on a mirrored array, it is easy enough to modify a few files in XP Pro to get that option. The data is going to be there even if your OS drive dies. You just have to have an OS to boot into to get at it.

Sul.