Vista - Booting off a stripped set

(I'm unable to post in the Vista newsgroups! Anyone knows why? The site acts
as if I'm not logged in (the sign in button is always present) and simply
redirects me to the same page when I try to click the ask a question button.
I'm crossposting to the group instead, I hope it works.)

Hello, I'm trying to do something which isn't supported, but I'm trying to
work around it: Moving Vista to a stripped volume on dynamic disks.

My first attempt involved simply imaging my simple volume (using Acronis
True Image), creating the stripped set and then restoring the image to it.
That obviously didn't boot, and I later found out that you can't boot off
stripped volumes due to MBR limitations, which makes sense.

My second attempt was creating a small (100mb) partition at the start of the
drive, copying the c:\boot\ directory, and bootmgr file there, installing the
mbr on it (using VistaDVD:\boot\boosect /nt60 z: /mbr on the recovery cd) and
then booting from it. That failed however, as I wasn't able to edit the BCD
to point the {default} entry to the C: drive. The "bcdedit /store z:\boot\bcd
/set {default} device partition=c" command simply failed with "Operation not
supported".

Third attemps was excluding Vista from the stripped set: I create a 25gb
simple volume at the start of the disk, and used diskpart's "retain"command
on it. I then restored my image to the main stripped set, and moved the
contents of the \windows directory to the small 25gb partition, then adding a
symlink so that z:\windows to z:\, I then mounted that partition on
c:\windows and copied to boot manager to it. That almost worked, however, the
computer instead reboot where that "Vista is loading" black screen with the
progress bar would appear.


I'm stumped, does anyone know of a way to sucefully offload the booting
process to another, bootable, partition, so that I can keep my entire system
on the stripped set?

First off,youre dead-wrong on "can't boot of a striped set",RAID 0 is
defiently
a striped set & typically most users choose this instead of RAID 1 for
performance.
2nd,i'm not 100% sure but dynamic disks dont belong in a RAID set,to read
more,go to :
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B323442
Also,one should first set the BIOS for RAID,plus configure a RAID set in
the post-
BIOS RAID utility.To learn about RAID,go to:
http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/emea/eng/242788.htm

"yuriks" wrote:

> (I'm unable to post in the Vista newsgroups! Anyone knows why? The site acts
> as if I'm not logged in (the sign in button is always present) and simply
> redirects me to the same page when I try to click the ask a question button.
> I'm crossposting to the group instead, I hope it works.)
>
> Hello, I'm trying to do something which isn't supported, but I'm trying to
> work around it: Moving Vista to a stripped volume on dynamic disks.
>
> My first attempt involved simply imaging my simple volume (using Acronis
> True Image), creating the stripped set and then restoring the image to it.
> That obviously didn't boot, and I later found out that you can't boot off
> stripped volumes due to MBR limitations, which makes sense.
>
> My second attempt was creating a small (100mb) partition at the start of the
> drive, copying the c:\boot\ directory, and bootmgr file there, installing the
> mbr on it (using VistaDVD:\boot\boosect /nt60 z: /mbr on the recovery cd) and
> then booting from it. That failed however, as I wasn't able to edit the BCD
> to point the {default} entry to the C: drive. The "bcdedit /store z:\boot\bcd
> /set {default} device partition=c" command simply failed with "Operation not
> supported".
>
> Third attemps was excluding Vista from the stripped set: I create a 25gb
> simple volume at the start of the disk, and used diskpart's "retain"command
> on it. I then restored my image to the main stripped set, and moved the
> contents of the \windows directory to the small 25gb partition, then adding a
> symlink so that z:\windows to z:\, I then mounted that partition on
> c:\windows and copied to boot manager to it. That almost worked, however, the
> computer instead reboot where that "Vista is loading" black screen with the
> progress bar would appear.
>
>
> I'm stumped, does anyone know of a way to sucefully offload the booting
> process to another, bootable, partition, so that I can keep my entire system
> on the stripped set?