I'm building a DIY home server, including a Gigabyte GA-MA780G-UD3H motherboard. For recovery purposes, I would very much like to install the OS drive as a RAID 1 array, leveraging the onboard RAID 1 features of the motherboard.

However, when trying to install WHS, it craps out at the beginning, complaining: "Windows Home Server could not initialize UI subsystem"

I've narrowed down the problem to the RAID vs. AHCI feature in the BIOS. If the HDDs are configured as RAID, it craps out. If I change that BIOS setting to AHCI and leave everything else the same, it installs fine.

So -- any suggestions on how I can get things to install on a RAID 1?

thanks.

--kurt

I know there are several people over at the wegotserved site that have the WHS OS in a Raid 1 setup. You might look or ask over there.

You need to load the RAID driver during setup, and possibly again during the text mode install. Also, be sure you are using true hardware RAID (not Fake Raid) as software RAID mirrors can cause issues.

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Alex Kuretz
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Respectfully, no.

The MSKB article you linked specifically refers to Windows software RAID, which involves Dynamic Disks. THIS is a bad idea as it will screw with demigrator and the storage obfuscation process. You have to work fairly hard to set this up though, and a "fake raid" card, while technically "software-driven," is not Windows software raid in the sense that Microsoft refers to it. Since the actual raid process is happening in the storage driver, MS doesn't consider it "software raid" even though the driver is making the CPU do the "work" (as the fakeraid device lacks a dedicated CPU).

While "fake raid" cards do suck, for a mirror (Raid1) there really isn't a whole lot for them to do anyway. Fakeraid is really nasty for RAID5 though - if you want to run a R5 array, either do it purely in software (but not on WHS!) or get thyself a true card with dedicated processor and memory.

The whole trick is that the correct drivers need to be integrated into the WHS install CD, because (IIRC) the install process won't allow you to use F6 to load them on-demand.

Thanks for clarifying the differences between Windows software RAID and "fake RAID", and I agree that the KB article refers specifically to dynamic disks. Do you have first-hand experience with using "fake RAID" with the WHS system partition? I don't have personal experience but have heard of users sometimes having issues when using software RAID on the WHS system partition, which led me to make the warning about fake RAID.



Slipstreaming drivers into the WHS install was a pain for me, which meant F6 is required, I had to do it to load the RAID drivers for the original MediaSmart Server OS image, and Damian has documented his experience loading drivers with a DIY build.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

Slip streaming didn't work at all for me.

I ended up doing the following after installing in ide mode:

1) Moved the system drive to a second controller that had drivers installed.
2) Restarted and changed the bios to boot from the system drive on the secondary controller, at the same time enabled Raid mode in the bios.
3) Booted to safe mode and installed the intel matrix drivers.
4) Shutdown and moved the system drive back to the intel sata ports and installed the mirror drive
5) Changed the bios boot back to the intel controller and system drive. Booted the system up.
6) Used the Intel Matrix utility to Raid 1 the system drive on the fly to the new mirror drive I installed.



Jeff