HOWTO nvidia raid dual boot
From Gentoo Linux Wiki
I have been struggeling with getting Windows running on a nvidia software raid (mirroring). I had to work around few quirks on my way which are summed up here. This was done one a MCP65 based chipset (nForce 520) but may apply to others, too.
Contents |
[edit] Installing Gentoo
I switched "Integrated Peripherals" -> "OnBoard IDE" -> "Mode" from "IDE" to "ACHI" mode in the BIOS. After that I booted gentoo and did what is described at HOWTO Install on Software RAID. My partition layout had ~40 GB left on each disk for the windows OS.
[edit] Installing Windows
The free space at the end of the disk was partitioned using cfdisk (Type: 07 NTFS) (Note: Windows was not able to create a fourth primary partition on the disk). After that I switched "Integrated Peripherals" -> "OnBoard IDE" -> "Mode" from "IDE" to "RAID" mode in the BIOS and set the 2 SATA channels that had the disks attached to "Enabled" (Note: Windows is not able to use AHCI from what I can tell). After that I pressed "F10" during booting and set both drives to mirror. Then I installed windows (pressing F6 and loading both drivers from the bootdisk).
[edit] Fixing grub
I switched "Integrated Peripherals" -> "OnBoard IDE" -> "Mode" from "IDE" to "ACHI" mode in the BIOS, again (Note: My gentoo 2007.1 install CD was not able to find the cdrom when I had mode=RAID). I did the steps to install grub described at HOWTO Install on Software RAID.
[edit] Getting both running
Finally I switched back "Integrated Peripherals" -> "OnBoard IDE" -> "Mode" from "IDE" to "RAID" mode in the BIOS. So both work since my installed gentoo is able to use sata_nv and the provided driver from nvidia for windows is also able.
[edit] Conclusion
Took about 2 month to figure it out, cost me many raid mirror syncing and even more sleepless night, caused my to hate windows even more and blame myself for buying a new computer.
