{"id":475,"date":"2011-07-13T17:29:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T00:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.net\/wordpress\/?p=475"},"modified":"2012-08-12T19:16:16","modified_gmt":"2012-08-13T02:16:16","slug":"booting-from-a-40tb-raid-drive-in-windows-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"Booting from a 4.0TB raid drive in Windows 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woot!\u00a0 I just set up my system the last few nights with *three* 2TB drives all connected in RAID 5 setup into a single, 4.0 TB partition – AND I am using that huge bit bucket as my primary boot drive.\u00a0 Now I have speed from the data striping and redundancy from the RAID. \u00a0 It’s quite nice so far, but I’m still getting all my old software installed. \u00a0 However, up until about a month ago – this wasn’t possible with the standard Intel storage controller that comes with almost all the new 2nd generation core systems (or with most RAID controllers).\u00a0 But getting this magical land to work involves a lot of new information and a good bit of bleeding-edge fighting.<\/p>\n

What you need to know: <\/strong>
\nFirst off, getting a RAID-ed boot partition larger than 2.2TB involves several pieces that need to work together.\u00a0 If you only have the first 2, then you can still boot from a single-drive larger than 2.2TB, but you won’t be able to use it in a RAID setup with large partitions.<\/p>\n

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  1. A motherboard with EFI support<\/li>\n
  2. An OS that can boot in EFI mode and supports GPT partitions<\/li>\n
  3. A raid controller that can support creating and using boot partitions larger than 2.2TB.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    First off, you need a motherboard with an EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface)<\/a> bios.\u00a0 EFI bios is the successor to the 20+ year old CMOS bios.\u00a0 You might remember or have seen CMOS when that awful text screen came up when you hit the power and it would count memory or say ‘Press [del] to enter setup’.\u00a0 Well, Intel with a lot of other companies finally, happily, heavenly, triumphantly are putting the nails in what had become a painful bit of computing legacy by throwing out CMOS and inventing EFI.\u00a0 Apple has had EFI bios in their machines for a few years now, and some of the first-generation Core i3\/i5\/i7 motherboards had EFI support too – but it was spotty and very few things seemed to take advantage of it.\u00a0 Which brings us to #2 – needing an OS that supports EFI booting and GPT.<\/p>\n

    If you have a motherboard that supports booting in EFI mode, you still need an OS that supports it and knows how to boot from partitions created with GPT (GUID Partitioning Table)<\/a>. I had an EFI board on my old system, but you couldn’t actually boot in EFI mode unless you used an early Linux distribution with EFI support or until about Windows Vista SP1\/Win7 range.\u00a0 Not only that, but EFI booting only worked on 64-bit versions of the Vista\/Win7.\u00a0 If you’d bought the 32-bit version – then you were out of luck.\u00a0 The Vista route was also painful because unless you had an install disk that had the EFI boot files on it, you couldn’t actually install Vista in EFI mode.\u00a0 Early versions of the Vista install CD’s (at least the one I had) didn’t have the EFI boot files.\u00a0 I never learned if someone who had one of those early disks could return it and get an install disk with EFI boot support.\u00a0 The reason you needed this is because if you couldn’t boot in EFI mode, you were stuck with the 2.2TB CMOS MBR boot limit.\u00a0 If you weren’t in EFI mode during the install process, Vista\/Win7 will refuse to create a boot partition larger than 2.2TB because it knew a MBR system couldn’t boot from it.\u00a0 Unfortunately, you couldn’t override this in the install.\u00a0 GPT booting was usually only supported when the BIOS booted in EFI mode.\u00a0 So if your OS install disk couldn’t boot to EFI, or wasn’t able to make GPT boot partitions in CMOS mode, you were still out of luck.\u00a0 As you’ll see, booting in EFI mode is actually more than just having a disk with the EFI files on it.\u00a0 It’s a two-step approach, but those details will come later.<\/p>\n

    Finally, Windows 7 64-bit comes along and seems to solve our problems. \u00a0 The OS install disk has EFI boot support on it.\u00a0 The install disk is able to make bootable GPT partitions larger than 2.2tb.\u00a0 Awesome.\u00a0 But until this last month, you weren’t able to get your Intel RAID controller to make a bootable RAID set larger than 2.2tb because Intel hadn’t finished writing the EFI bios support for it.\u00a0 You have to check the motherboard manufacturer’s website for a BIOS update – but you should now see new BIOS’s with the new large-partition RAID booting support.\u00a0 That was the final key to the puzzle.<\/p>\n

    So, without further adieu, here is how one does this with the following equipment:<\/p>\n