kokser

I tried searching, but didn't find anything :/

I just bought 4 new hard drives and switched them out with my old single hard drive. I then went into the bios to set them in RAID. I proceeded with booting and installed the hard drives in a RAID 5. Then I just plugged in my USB drive, which had nothing but WIndows 7 iso on it, and proceeded with booting. As the title says, I got the error:
"No bootable partition in table"
So I went back to my laptop and removed the win7 iso and placed a XP iso instead. Then booted it up on my new hard drives, but got the exact same message!

I have no idea of what I should do now :/ I have been on google for nearly 40 minutes and I can't find anyone else with the same problem (only people where it siddenly happens, and then they just buy a new computer :S)

I bought 4 Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 320GB hard drives, just in case you need to know.

genotech

use winpe and then go into diskpart and see if they have bootable partitions

kokser

I will try and download winpe and see what it can do. I don't think I have any partitions, or maybe just not any bootable partition, though it says in the RAID UI that my RAID is bootable. That is why I tried with the XP iso, usually it just boots up and lets me create partitions, but not this time :/

raptor_pa

The drives need formatted, and an OS installed to be bootable, you will need an install cd rather than the ISO on an external drive. Windows won't start from an external drive, and new HDs have no file system or OS - kind of a catch 22 but booting to the install CD will solve the problem.

kokser

Though I have never installed a new OS on a completely new hard drive before, I have never encountered any problems with installing from a iso via USB, instead of the old and slow CD/DVD drives.

What's worse is, that with my 4 new hard drives, there is not enough sata power cables for an optical drive, so I'm stuck with either 4 hard drives or 3 hard drives and an optical drive.

edit:
I'll see if I can just find an external dvd drive. I fail to see how different it can be for a BIOS to install something from USB and from an optical drive. Should make absolutely no different, it's the exact same files on them. But anyway...

Also, here's an image of the RAID setup:
http://i41.tinypic.com/zxodah.jpg

raptor_pa

The Bios doesn't install - you need to have a bootable device to load some level of OS, an ISO on a USB hard drive won't be bootable - If you were booted to an OS already then you could install from a bootable OS, but all the BIOS knows is the physical location on a disk where the computer can find the files needed to boot the PC to an OS.

raptor_pa

If you have a Molex connector ( 4 pin for IDE devices free you can get an adapter for SATA power.

kokser

Today I deleted the RAID configuration. This time I could succesfully get into the Windows XP partitioner. I have partitioned all the hard drives and currently formating them. After this is done, I will try and configure the RAID again, and then see if I can install Windows 7.

When I install OS's (I have done it many, many times before, part of my job (first time installing RAID)), there's a possibility to install RAID drivers (Press F6 to install RAID drivers), but is this neccesary, and what drivers would I install?

kokser

Okay so now all the hard drives are partitioned. I realize that this was probably waste of time. I configured the RAID5 again and booted up the Windows XP partitioner and spammed F6. This is the **** I got.

http://i41.tinypic.com/mt5rua.jpg

so I press S

http://i41.tinypic.com/2u6l0s2.jpg

If I don't press F6, this is all I get
http://i44.tinypic.com/adp4k1.jpg

kokser

I googled around and found that I can just use a USB pen instead of a floppy drive. What I still don't know is, where do I find out what RAID drivers I need? Or is it universal? And how do I find them? :P

kokser

Stupid question is stupid. I found the drivers on the driver cd that followed with my motherboard. However, the USB pen was not detected and I cannot install the RAID drivers without a floppy drive. Unbelieveable really.

kokser

Okay so I copied the drivers over and that didn't work. It didn't recognize any USB pen when it asked for drivers. So I copied the entire cd over. Still no result. Then I found a USB emulator in the BIOS. I configured it to emulate my USB pen as a floppy drive. No luck either. So now I'm stuck with either purchasing a floppy drive, which I won't. Or drop my idea of setting up a RAID, which would suck.

Does ANYONE have ANY ideas?

raptor_pa

Slipstream the driviers into the install with nlite. Search the forum here on slipstream sata driver for more details. Other than the drivers should be no difference

kokser

Well well well. Ain't Win7 just 5 times superior to XP? Yes, yes it is. I can load the RAID drivers from USB during Windows 7 installation!

Loading and installing the drivers was no problemo.

http://i42.tinypic.com/2nta82.jpg

However, I got this **** now.

http://i44.tinypic.com/14uhudi.jpg

What do I do? :/ I have no idea of where that log is, and google won't tell me.

I already formated (before installing the drivers).

kokser

hohoho, I ended up on google for another search and found a solution.

Remove the USB pen.

raptor_pa

Maybe 2 times, it still needed the drivers LOL.. Glad your's getting it sorted thru, sometimes it just takes some creative searching. Most problems you encounter someone else has probably already had it and figured it out... just finding the sources can be the tough part. Good job!