(solved) SuperMicro X8 BIOS raid (adaptec) and win7 64bit Install

[james23]

Hi,
My HW:
MB: Supermicro X8DAH+-F , sm 3u Chassis , 24gb ram ecc

First off im normally a ONLY Hardware RAID guy, however for this specific setup i must use the on-board (SM X8) BIOS raid. (so please try to help with the issue i have below, and not try to convince me to change the hardware setup ie saying BIOS raid is bad go HW raid, - i agree - but i must use BIOS RAID in this case) .

on the X8 , for BIOS raid you can choose from the Intel Code-base or the Adaptec Code-base- im trying to use the adaptec code-base. Ive created my Raid 1 , marked it as bootable, and then booted (via usb stick) my windows 7 64bit install USB. At install the drive does not appear (as expected) so i click load drivers, and then select the win7 64bit Adaptec RAID drivers I downloaded from the Supermicro X8DAH web page.

Once i click/load the 64bit adpatec driver i get this message:

“To continue installation, use the Load Driver option to install 32-bit and signed 64-bit drivers. Installing an unsigned 64-bit device driver is not supported and might result in an unusable windows installation”


The unusual thing is, i tried doing a 32bit win7 install with this same raid-1 setup, and it worked perfectly! (i again had to "load drivers" and choose the 32bit Adaptec Raid driver, right before selecting the drive to install win 7 to, but no error message, and the install ran perfectly (as well as booting win7 32bit via the raid 1).

anyone have any experience with this or any insight?

Im going to keep messing with this all day to day and will update if i find a solution.

tks!

 

[james23]

Hello, I have resolved this issue. The solution is below:

It was a combination of two things really:

1) the boot order (as set in the BIOS) is very important. When installing win7 64bit you need to have the boot drive (or raid array) set FIRST in the boot order ( i usually set USB as 1 and the RAID/HDD as 2 assuming that 99% of the time i wont have a USB stick in, and when i do need to boot a USB stick i just insert it and reboot... not good, set the RAID/HDD as 1 in boot order, and use F11 to select the USB to boot as needed

2) I needed to use a win 7 64bit DVD to do the install, (not a win 7 64bit install USB stick) with this particular setup. the main reason is, as im using the motherboard / BIOS RAID, the DVD drive is SATA attached to those same ports, so when i was trying to install win7 to the RAID-1 via a win7 USB stick , i would get that error BC it was seeing the empty DVD drive as the 1st drive, and the actual RAID as the 2nd drive) thus i fixed this by using a DVD to do the install.

(supermicro BIOS on this X8 MB , for RAID, lets you choose between the adaptec codebase , or the INTEL codebase... both are using the same 6 SATA ports, and the same hardware on the MB. It turns out when using the Intel RAID codebase, win7 64bit does not need any F6 drivers. This was not my issue, but is something to be aware of.)

thanks