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Okay, so I have 2 120GB Sandisk SSDs. I plugged one into the system, fired it up and all was fine to install windows (installed 7). The owner then asked to have a 2nd SSD added to do a raid 0. Contrary to online help forums, the machine (Lenovo 50-50 (90B6) did NOT have a RAID utility in the Bios, under SATA mode it was either Disabled, IDE, or AHCI - no RAID option.

We also had the issue that the machine was one SATA port shy for a proposed HDD backup drive (not yet installed). SO, I purchased this Raid card from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Port-SATA-Express-Controller/dp/B003GS8VA4/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1470225806&sr=1-2&keywords=raid+card) to A. fix the shortage of ports and B. provide SATA support. It was a complete faff to get it working as the instructions provided no help or drivers but I got there in the end and got the cards raid BIOS going, set up the two SSDs in RAID 0 and fired up a windows 7 boot drive. It showed me a now 223.4GB partition named 'Disk 0 Partition 1. but says "Windows cannot be installed to disk 0 Partition 1. (show details). showing details tells me "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu.

SO. back to the BIOS to check it's booting my new RAID 0 drive before windows and I now see that the BIOS isn't showing the new drive in the boot sequence, nor is it available to add to said sequence. Pulling my hair out here! any suggestions?

I've also tested each of the two SSDs in a separate machine and no issues whatsoever.

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  • Does Disk 0 partition 1 have used space, or is it un-allocated space? I would think given you just initialized a raid it would be blank, but just to be sure.
    – Lister
    Aug 3, 2016 at 12:15
  • Does the card require drivers that are not shipped with the cd version of win7? Maybe you need to load the drivers manually? Had that happen to me with an Acer box I fixed recently. The disk showed up but the installer refused to install windows to it.
    – gilgwath
    Aug 3, 2016 at 12:21
  • Hi both. Both drives are formatted so unused. It came with a disk that Windows 7 wasn't too happy with thus all the issues, but got it installed in the end through device managed. Have since whipped windows from the drives thus I need to install them again. As far as I can see, the disk drivers are OS installs.
    – Tfom
    Aug 3, 2016 at 12:52
  • I've seen a few posts where people suggested disabling quick boot or fast boot. Try that and see if that has any effect
    – DrZoo
    Aug 3, 2016 at 14:44
  • A few updates: I tried un-raiding the drives, so still both plugged into the raid card, but no array. now seeing 2x 111.18GB disks, but cant write to either. Then tried plugging them both into the motherboard, so nothing plugged into the raid card = 2x 111.18GB disks, perfectly happy to install OS. SO, even though it recognises the drives in the RAID card, even though i installed the RAID controller and it lets me boot into the RAID card's own BIOS, it WILL NOT let me install onto those drives, if they're plugged into the card.
    – Tfom
    Aug 4, 2016 at 13:50

1 Answer 1

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I found the issue and I'm posting it on here for anyone in the future who comes across this with the same issue. After much searching I found that the problem was in fact that Lenovo had not built in support for booting from PCI sockets - the RAID card was plugged into a PCI socket :/ There is, as yet, no workaround fr this. Lenovo have outright refused to add such support into any of their BIOS' - poor effort Lenovo!

In the end I had to buy a third SSD to plug directly into the board as a dedicated boot drive. Once the system is booted, it's happy to use the PCI port, so from boot, all the software loads are handled by the RAID array created by the raid card.

Solution: Don't buy Lenovos if you want to customize anything

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  • I hope that your third SSD is actually a cheap USB flashdrive. No need to speand big money for only a boot partition.
    – Hennes
    Aug 11, 2016 at 9:48
  • Also, booting from PCI sockets.. the card you linked to is not PCI. I assume you meant PCI express, which is totally different from PCI. (granted, their names PCI and PCI-e are close. The technogy behind them is not).
    – Hennes
    Aug 11, 2016 at 9:50
  • The card I linked to is backwards compatible, but yes, PIC-e. why ON EARTH would I want to boot from a USB drive? I'm booting from a 60GB (Cheapest I could find) SSD with a higher read speed than the other drives. It may also hold a backup of the OS on there.. haven't decided yet.
    – Tfom
    Aug 11, 2016 at 15:55
  • Q: Why would you want to boot from USB? A: Because it is cheaper. As long as you only need something to start the boot process from (just enough to load the windows kernel and RAID drivers) after which you could proceed from booting from the RAIDed SSD's. As long as it is only used to read minimal data at boot its speed would be fine. (typical example: ESXi which is usually booted from USB or SD cards)
    – Hennes
    Aug 11, 2016 at 16:00
  • Hi Hennes, I've looked into this and can only find information on loading the windows Kernel from the RAM and the only way I've seen to do this would be via having windows installed first...
    – Tfom
    Aug 15, 2016 at 15:36

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