non-UEFI GPT Boot Disk
I did a search on this question and was unable to find a definitive answer so I thought I should post it here. If it has been answered before, I apologize. I know that, oficially, booting Windows 7 or 2008 from a GPT disk on a non-UEFI machine is not supported but has anyone done it? I am having a machine built and I would like to create a multi-tera byte RAID 5 array that I wanted to partition into 2 parts: a couple of hundred G for the OS (W2K8R2) and the rest for data (VM's, backups, etc). The problem is that the machine is a non-UEFI machine. So, can I simply create, say, a 10T RAID 5 array, partition it as mentioned and install W2K8R2 on it successfully? Anything that I have to do to get it to work? Thanks Bert
August 26th, 2011 4:44pm

I suggest using two smaller disks in RAID 1 for operating system and multiple HDD high capacity RAID 5 for data. Use at least two channel adapter. UEFI allows with GPT boot from space beyond 2TB.
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August 26th, 2011 5:05pm

That's the way that I may end up going but I would like to exhaust other avenues first. My new box has support for a maximum of 6 SATA devices so I would like to maximize disk space as much as possible - that's why I wanted a single RAID 5 array. I just wanted to find out if any one has done what I am proposing and what their experience was. Bert
August 26th, 2011 5:10pm

Create RAID 5 and two virtual disks on it. First virtual disk is for example 100GB and second isone is for example cca 5TB. Install operating system on the first virtual disk and after installation convert the second disk to GPT. Configuration: I mean doing all the configuration in RAID BIOS.
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August 26th, 2011 7:27pm

I'll give that a shot this evening and update this thread with the result. Bert
August 26th, 2011 7:30pm

So far, no good. I set up the disks as a RAID 5 array (for some reason, the BIOS RAID utility insisted that the drives are a bit over 800G ea instead of 3T each) but when I ran W2K8R2 setup, it tells me that there are no fixed disks to install Windows on and a quick check with diskpart confims this. I guess I will have to keep plugging away. Bert
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August 27th, 2011 5:43am

Does this mean, that you could not set virtual disk(s) in RAID controller settings? Have you updated Bios and firmware for RAID controller? (After this procedure you are expected to disconnect RAIDed disks and create new RAID configuration). BTW what type of server/RAID controller do you have?
August 27th, 2011 3:06pm

Yes, I could set up disks in the RAID controller, but not using the full 3T size of the individual disks. The controller listed the drives as being a bit over 800G and allowed me to create a RAID 5 array that was around 4T. It then allowed me to create a 2nd array that was around 10T in size. But, the W2K8 setup wouldn't recognize them. I evern tried abandoning RAID all together. The setup would not recognize that I had any hard drives in the system. So, I loaded the driver from teh motherboard CD and setup listed all of the drives but said that it couldn't load Windows on any of the drives. It allowed me to create a 250G partition on dive 0, but it still wouldn't allow me to load Windows. Bert
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August 27th, 2011 3:50pm

In order for setup to recognize the arrays, you have to load the correct RAID driver for the RAID controller and the Windows version being installed. For example, for an onboard SB7xx controller on an AMD 7xx chipset motherboard and Windows 7 or 2008 R2, you would find the driver in the .\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SB7xx\RAID\W764A folder of the expanded RAID driver package from AMD. There should be a suitable driver on the CD that came with the motherboard. Good luck in your attempt. I am trying to do something similar with a 2 TB mirror.
October 21st, 2011 4:29pm

I succeeded in changing my 2 TB Mirror from GPT to MBR without losing the data on it. Using dskprobe.exe, I found the boot sector for the GPT partition. It was at sector 264,192. Then I edited the "protective" MBR to show one partition starting at 264,192. I calculated what the cyllinder, head and sector numbers should be. Windows 7 would not recognize the partition. It turned out that the GPT boot sector had more sectors than there were on the disk. I changed the total sectors to the value dskprobe reported for the drive, less the partition offset (264192). I opened diskpart.exe in a command prompt, which refreshed the disk mgr info. Diskpart showed the volume with the correct label and all the other parameters. I ran chkdsk on it, which only reported free space marked as used in the bitmap. It corrected the bitmap. The volume mounted right away and showed the expected content. I then opened AMD RAIDXpert and started synchronization (fix). It is progressing nicely, doing about 30% in the first hour.
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October 22nd, 2011 10:53pm

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