I guess ms STILL can't get a windows setup right when there is more than one hd in the system?!!! This is nuts....
I have a raid array on its own controller, and 2 sata drives on the motherboard's controller. In the Win7 setup I supplied the raid driver, and the array appeared fine, and I nuked the partition and installed to it raw. (Setup doesn't have to do a full format anymore? That was wild!)
So on the first couple reboots, I left the dvd in the drive and the "press a key to boot from dvd" or similar message would time out, and the system would boot as expected. So later I finally take out the dvd and reboot, and I get a "can't find system disk" type of message (didn't actually say anything specific about bootmgr missing). Hhowever, I could boot fine again if I put the dvd in the drive and let the "press a key to boot from dvd" message time out.
(I keep thinking of the "trust me" apple commeercials at this point.)
So what I found later is that bootmgr file and Boot folder are on one of the sata drives, and not the raid drive. But this was after that drive not even appearing in explorer, I thought it got trashed by the setup! (Memories of windows installs past.)
In the end, I just disabled the sata controller altogether so the raid drive was the only drive in the system for setup to not get confused. Everything is fine now, system boots normally and with the sata drives back online.
BUT... bootmgr and Boot folder are not on the raid drive (C:)! They are on the same sata drive as before. I was rebooting fine before with the sata disabled, so they must have been on C: and then either got moved to the sata drive, or they were detected on the sata drive and deleted from C:???? What gives!?
So I guess the only way to be sure is disabled the sata controller again and see if 7 will still boot from the raid. Damn weird. (Hey, it's still windows, they say. LOL)