[Solved] HDD is formatted to RAID, and getting a new mobo.

Forum Storage : General Discussion [Solved] HDD is formatted to RAID, and getting a new mobo.

So hi, I'm getting a new motherboard in 3 days or so, but now I noticed that in my bios, my single WD Blue Caviar is set to RAID not IDE. I changed it to IDE and windows didn't boot, then I switched back to RAID and it all worked just fine. I'm worried that when I get my new motherboard in a few days, when I try to reinstall windows 7 on the same HDD (after booting from the disc), windows 7 64-bit installer won't recognize the HDD and/or not be able to install on it. I looked this issue online and found one person that has my same problem but no solution was provided. :??:

Thanks in advance.

Reply to pcnoob101

Best answer

The issue is that RAID uses different drivers than IDE does, so Windows can't access the drive after you switch modes. But if the drive is just a single drive and not paired with another in RAID-0, RAID-1 etc. then it should be perfectly usable by Windows 7.

Nonetheless, prudence dictates that you make a backup copy of all your files before you start installing Windows 7 on the drive.

Reply to sminlal

Thanks for the reply.
Sooooo.....windows 7 should install just fine with the new mobo using IDE settings?

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Reply to pcnoob101

Best answer selected by pcnoob101.

Reply to pcnoob101

pcnoob101 wrote :

Sooooo.....windows 7 should install just fine with the new mobo using IDE settings?

It should. A lot of motherboards have "IDE", "AHCI" and "RAID" for the disk controller - if possible change it to "AHCI" (Advanced Host Controller Interface) mode just prior to installing Windows 7. That's the "native" mode for SATA drives and it enables some features such as command queuing that IDE doesn't support.

I'd also advise you to disconnect ALL OTHER DRIVES except the drive your installing onto and the optical drive you're installing from. Windows 7 will create a 100MB "System Reserved" partition to boot from, and if there is any space available on other drives then it will create it on one of those. Most people prefer that the system boot from the drive that the OS is installed on.

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