Windows 7 Windows 7 second installation left me confused

[mujarice]

Not necessarily a windows 7 problem, but I thought that I would try here for advice...
System:
evga ultra sli 790i MB
intel quad core cpu
8 gb ram
old hdd's = 3 500 gb (2 raid0)
new hdd's = 2 kingston 64gb ssd's (striped to run os) and 4 1.5 tb seagates (raid5)

I have installed Win 7 once already on the two SSDs no problem. 7 actually ran flawlessly! I left the original HDDs in it though also only after deleting the partition that the OS (vista 64bit) was on. I had to back up some files and whatnot before I installed the new HDDs. So now I have removed the 3 500s and installed the new HDDs, configured the RAID 5 setup and went to boot up and got a BOOT DISK FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK. When I insert the win 7 disk, it loads the windows files, and then before I get to the point where it asks if I want to Upgrade or Custom install, BLUE SCREEN!!!

So now, I have tried my vista 64 disk so that i could get to the point where i can format my SSDs but even though i have loaded the raid drivers that came with my MB, still wont recognize my disks.

So now I am stuck here.... and I am using my PS3 browser and controller to beg for help. It took a really long time to type this!
Please! any suggestions would help!

BTW i'm thinking that my next step is to take the SSDs to a friends PC and try to format them there. Good idea?

 

[Psyborg]

Let me see if I've got this right. You have 2 SSD's in RAID 0 and tried to set up another RAID 5 with 4 other HDDs? Can you set up dual raid arrays? Maybe your arrays are messed up. Can you get into the raid configuration?

 

[RAK]

I have no experience with solid state drives, but, assuming the probem is not related, I am thinking that the MBR and, possibly, boot manager and "boot" folder were placed on the original hard disk(s). Can you try the repair startup option?

 

[mujarice]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.
Ok, so I get the blue screen before it even makes it to the repair startup disks option. Command prompt is not an option... the only way that i have made it to command prompt was by inserting the vista 64 disk instead of win 7. In cmd prompt my drives or partitions are not recognized at all. The raid config is availabe and both arrays are detected and "healthy" i have the 2 SSDs made bootable and are the primary boot device in bios. It should be noted that after some frustration i tried deleting both arrays and rebuilding them in the raid config... it said that all data would be lost on the drives... so i thought this could kinda be a way of formatting them. my mobo does support raid on 6 sata slots... all of which my drives are connected to. I'm beginning to think it might be a hardware compatibility issue... i could be very wrong... but the only thing that was changed was the addition of my new hdds and the removal of the old. Since all of the HHDs are occupying the sata slot i did have to move my bluray disk drive to the dedicated esata slot on my mobo, but it still is recognized and seems to be operating fine. It should also be noted that before I did most of this, I tried removing all of the hdds except for the 2 ssds that had win 7 installed and inserted the bluray back into one of the sata slots and still BOOT DISK FAILURE error. That was one of the first things that i tried (before i deleted the arrays)
RAK, so if I am understanding you correct, I should try the original 3 500 gb hdds installed again and try to repair from there... this is my next step. I will try this right now and let you know the results.
Thanks for the help both of you

 

[mujarice]

Working! Slight new problem

OK Win 7 working now! I removed my 4 HDDs and put my BluRay back into a SATA slot... same problem. Then I formatted my SSDs on a friends computer and tried again. Huge Success! Not sure why this worked but maybe there was some sort of BOOT folder still on them and that was giving me that error. Win 7 in perfect working order again.

However, I have a new predicament... I am pretty sure that my BluRay is not going to work in my eSATA slot even though it appeared to be working before. Are there any Internal BluRay writers that are eSATA compatible? Unfortunately, when purchasing my total of 6 HDDs with only 6 SATA slots on my 790i mobo, this problem never occurred to me. I figured there would be something in BIOS that would allow me to change the eSATA to a SATA, and now after spending about 2 days fiddling with my BIOS, I'm pretty sure that there isn't.

So, this isn't really a Win 7 issue so I don't expect a reply... I guess I will have to accept the fact that I was a dumb*** and move on from here!

Thanks again for the help,
Matt

 

[RAK]

Don't rush away. I'll bet someone will have an answer!