Windows 7 boot from software raid 1

Everything goes fine and RAID 1 is established with no issues. I can start the windows from both of them. When I unplug disk 2 , it works fine. The issue comes in when I have the primary hard drive unplugged. It can't boot anywhere. I tried to use tools like Gparted live to boot and then change the boot.

Unfortunately from windows 7 there is no boot. I tried to use the BCD tool inside Windows recovery disk. So my question is that how would you deal with this issue in this scenario? I also ran the windows 7 disk and did a repair, it didn't help either. In a summary if I have the main hard drive unplugged , can't boot to windows any longer. My understanding was that I should deal with two different things:. The boot sequence from BIOS. I changed it to second hard drive and it didn't work.

Technically BIOS tries to boot from second hard drive but simply it can't find the boot loader. The boot loader in the second hard drive. I beleive there should be a way for doing that. I had the first hard drive plugged off , then tried to boot to the windows. I found another "Secondary plex" has been added. So I had 1. Windows 7 2. Secondary plex 3. Secondary Plex. When I booted to 3 everything worked fine.

When I attached the 1st hard drive again, the 3 disappeared and I had two options: 1. Windows 7 worked , but Secondary plex didn't work. I couldn't understand why, i wish I could. When I booted to the windows another weird thing happened. Windows detected the second hard drive Which was all the time at its place as a foreign disk, so I had to delete partitions and add mirror again. After Mirror is completed , again both 1 : Windows7 and 2 Secondary Plex boots to the windows without any issues.

Technically I think my first question will answer the second one. I just need to figure out why after plugging back the first hard drive , the windows couldn't boot from Secondary Plex. Please share with me your idea. I've dealt with a similar problem before.

I remember that one hard drive had the boot loader, and it was on a very small partition. The second drive had no such partition, so fixing the boot loader was not an easy task. You'll have the best results when you find a drive of the same size and interface type. Even better: find another of the same exact drive. Technically you don't have to match specs, but I haven't tested this with widely varying drive architectures. Open up Computer Management, Disk Management. Right-click the unallocated drive and select "New Mirrored Volume".

Select the drives you want to use and edit the volume sizes if necessary. Click Next. You will be prompted to convert the disk to Dynamic disk. Select Yes to continue. Once you've completed the steps above, the data from your primary volume will begin to mirror over to the secondary volume.

Mirroring time will depend on the amount of data being mirrored. Now, you've successfully mirrored your volume. Asked by:. Archived Forums. Windows 7 Miscellaneous.

Use this forum to discuss miscellaneous issues that cannot be covered in any other Windows 7 forum. Sign in to vote. I plan on doing regular backups of important data, however, I would like some redundancy via software RAID 1. I do not want to pay for windows server anything, I'd like to use what I have. Thursday, July 30, PM. Alaskan - Yes.. Provided you install the driver during the installation phase.

Friday, July 31, AM. Where at in the Win 7 installation process would this option be? I'd like to try and set everything up in Win 7 RC and migrate over to the full version of Win 7 when it becomes available Oct. Proposed as answer by lb Thursday, August 13, PM. I recently set up a GB barracuda I installed the OS on a single GB barracuda My thinking is that if you have all three drives connected and install the OS on the GB drive, you will be able to setup the mirror on the other two without an issue.

Hope this helps! Thursday, August 13, PM. That does help, did you have to break the mirror before setting them up in Windows 7?

Thursday, September 3, AM. Did anyone actually even read your question? The replies here are ridiculous. You then get this answer: "Yes.. Obviously this person either did not read yor question or has no clue because no driver is required. Then you get this: "My thinking is that if you have all three drives connected and install the OS on the GB drive, you will be able to setup the mirror on the other two without an issue. At least he admitted it to only be a thought. Just to let you know, I am running Windows 7 Home Premium.

It could posibly be that mirroring is not an option on 7 home premium. I cannot find verification of this either. Friday, November 20, AM. It appears that Windows 7 Home Premium does not support mirroring. Great, I thought Very irritating, especially as they seem to support striping.

Now I'm wondering if there's any registry hacks to convince it that it should support mirroring Monday, November 23, AM. I'm running Windows 7 Professional, and it does natively allow both striped and mirrored dynamic disks. My striped disks are on a non-boot volume, but I believe it does work on boot volumes too.

Apparently it just needs to be set up after installation -- convert the disk to a dynamic disk and then mirror it. Also note that you don't need to install any special drivers to get this to work. The only time that you'd need a driver is to get Windows to support a raid controller. Thursday, November 26, AM. Gday everyone, Just to add my experience, I'm running win7 enterprise and have mirrored my boot volume onto a secondary harddrive with no issues yep I know the original question was for non boot volumes but figured someone may find this post useful.

Converted both disks to dynamic, right click on the boot C: partition in disk management, click 'add mirror' select your secondary harddisk to mirror onto and its good to go! Edited by shadow Thursday, December 3, PM edit. Thursday, December 3, PM. Some time ago in Vista, I setup a 3 disk RAID 0 array of three 35gb non-boot partitions three partial partitions on three different physical drives and then did an in place upgrade to Win 7 Professional.

That worked. Win 7 found the RAID array again and everything was fine after reinstall. Then, I added some more drives to the system, plugging the original three into different SATA ports on the mainboard.