Issues reinstalling windows on np9170

Ive been trying to get a new ssd raid 0 running on my np9170 so I finally got around to doing it. Upgraded to dual 1tb crucial mx300 and after I install windows 7 or 8.1 it crashes after the initial install and reboot with a 0x7c error sometimes, or a 0xb3 error other times. Ill do what I can to upload crash data. Any pointers? Ive loaded the intel sata raid driver during install and it still happens. I updated the firmware on the crucials too.

 

Which size (in KB) did you choose for the stripe size? It shouldn't make a difference, but 16KB works well (too large and it wastes storage space).

Do you have any external devices connected? We couldn't install Windows 7 on a fairly old system (not RAID) due to the same error. Turned out removing the customer's USB dongle for their mouse was causing it; setup was able to finish and boot to desktop once that was out.

 

I removed all but needed components and it still errors out without giving details. The before mentioned 0x7c error is actually 0x7e. Still crashing.

I over clocked with Intel xtu as that's the only way the laptop overclock, but I can't find where to go to reset to default. I did a 64kb stripe size

 

Now I have Windows 10 with just a few of the needed drivers. I'm getting bsod irql not less or equal. No irq settings available in bios. Where are the np9170 bios updates?

 

Yes, that's because starting with Windows 7 the install process creates a secondary, hidden system partition containing the boot loader. This happens without user intervention, so you have no choice as to where it's going to install. You would expect it'd be tied in to drive you're pointing the normal install to, but ohno ... it can create that partition on different drives, often secondary spinnies or sometimes even that odd usb stick .

In order to prevent this and to make RAID-0 + non-4KB sector size possible I always use this method (slightly modified).

Code:

Boot from Windows installation media.
Press Shift+F10 at the first setup screen to open a command prompt.

diskpart
select disk 0
create partition primary size=100
active
format fs=ntfs label="BOOT" quick
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs label="OS" unit=65536
assign
exit

Then complete setup, deploying the Windows operation system to the second partition.

This way you can still raid the drives at >4KB and also install the OS on a >4KB formatted drive (for a small, drive-dependent performance gain *). Only 4KB bit is that small, second partition on the same striped drives. It's also safe now to leave secondary drives attached when installing, the location of the boot loader being under user-control.

Spoiler: detour

*) The graphs and excel are a bit hard to interpret, so made a small recap with average performance differences:



Mind that with a stripe size of, say, 64KB that means your partition has to be 64KB or more. After all, the RAID-0 is clipping your file in 64KB pieces, so if you keep cluster size of the Windows partition to its default 4KB then each file <65KB will be handled just like on a non-RAIDed system (by a drive), except at a performance penalty. Apart from a small wasted storage size penalty there's no reason not to opt for the largest cluster size possible, except when you have buggy firmware (as with the EVO).

Bit OT, perhaps, but maybe that install diy process will iron out the kink.

 

Oh yes! That's prompted a few immediate reinstalls here with secondaries pulled. #Windowswisdom