REQ: Advice, Setup Dual Boot Vista XP, Partition Software for RAID.

interested

interested

Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2006
Messages
795
Hello.

I have a PC which has windows xp pro SP2 installed on it.
It only has one Large partition spanned on a Raid 0 Array.

I now want to install a dual boot configuration with Windows Vista.

If this was a new computer setup i would have no problems with this task.
My only problem now is that i have one large partition and i need two to follow my dual boot install procedures.

The first step in my procedure is to free up some space by creating a new partition for the vista software using GParted, which is a LiveCD that boots up from the disk and should allow me to free up some of the space from my XP drive for my Vista Install.

Well unfortunately using both the last two releases of Gparted does not seem to work as the disk freezes during the boot process. So i found another similar Boot CD called PartedMagic. This Parted magic loader cd does boot, and has GParted on it but it sees my Raid Drive as two seperate drives and only shows free space. Thus it dosent like my Raid controller or somthing.

I am also aware of DiskPart command built into the Vista installer, but i have read that its unstable, and i am worried about whether it will work with RAID, so i would prefere somthing else.

SO my question.
Is there any other RAID compatible application ( prefereabley FREE) which can do this so i can continue on with my dual boot install.
otherwize its format everything and repartition and start from scratch for me :(

The Board i am using is a Asus P5B deluxe which uses intel P965 chipset,
The RAID i am using is the chipsets integrated intel ICH8, and i have it in RAID0.

Appreciate all the help you guys can provide.
 
I'm not sure if it's available as a trial, but Symantec's PartitionMagic would do it. If you happen to have a Ghost versions as well, gdisk is included and will handle the partition resizing.
 
There is a trial version of Partition Magic, but it doesn't actually resize your partitions... it will demonstrate what it can do, but won't until you pay... and if PartedMagic and Gparted both fail, I really think Partition Magic would as well....
 
Well i was able to get the latest USB version of Gparted to completely boot.

However for some reason it does not see my Single Raid ntfs partition, and only sees both my 320gb harddrives seperately and thinks they both are completely empty with "unalocated" space.

looks like Gparted just does not like the intel ICH8 raid.
I tried it on an older computer with a single PATA harddrive and it worked fine there.
(Asus P4P Deluxe, in case anyone was wondering)

I have no idea how old Gparted is, or why they would not support such a popular intel chipsets built in RAID controller, and its not like ICH8 is new, as there is ICH9 now on newer P5K boards.

I am aware of Partition Magic but unfortunately its not free :(
Still would be interesting to know if at least the Premium pay software works well with raid drives.

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys.
 
You can boot off the Vista DVD, and when you get to the Install screen press Shift+F10. This should drop you to a dos promt. From there you can use DISKPART and repartition the disk, it will even allow you to shrink the disk partitions and create a new one. I could never get Vista to install on my RAID-0 array (AT8 32X). NEver could find a driver Vista liked. Have your RAID Dirver for Vista handy and cross your fingers.

Oops, actaully read your entire post. I used DISKPART to resize the disk and all was well. Except for the not installing on my RAID array.
 
Well i ended up using an old copy (non-Norton) of Partition Magic that a friend lent me.
At first it gave an error, suggesting that my disk was setup as dynamic, ( which it was not, it was in fact basic ).

So, without changing anything I tried it again, and voila, this time it worked (glad i didnt giveup after the first error). I was thus able to split up my single large RAID0 Partition into two seperate basic partitions.

The rest was just a straightforward install of vista on the newly formed partion, thus resulting in my final dual boot configurated system.

And for the person who asked, Vista has all the necessary drivers for P5B Deluxe, intel ICH8R raid already integrated, so i did not need to provide any drivers at install. Assuming you have the same motherboard, your problem was most likely because you setup your other partion as dynamic, instead of basic, thus you cant install an OS on a dynamic disk.
Also after a successfull install you can always upgrade to the latest intel drivers by just downloading the intel matrix drivers from their website.

Thanks for the suggstions guys.
 
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