Can't install Windows 7 onto RAID0 SSD

Question

I'm having a very similar problem to the guy here. My setup:

• ASROCK extreme 6
• Intel Core i7-3770k
• 16 GB RAM
• 2x intel 330 120GB SSD
• NVIDIA GTX 680

I have confirmed that in the BIOS, the SATA controller is set to RAID (not AHCI).

Using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology tool, I combined the two drives into a raid0 volume. This is confirmed because when I restart, the raid volume shows up in the RST echo with the right size etc.

I have the Intel desktop SATA RAID controller driver loaded on a thumb drive.

When I load Windows 7 setup, it sees the 223GB array as one volume, but requires a driver. I put in the thumb drive, it recognizes that a compatible driver is on the thumb drive, I load it and get this error message:

Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computers hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu`

What can I do?

In the other thread, the guy said it was solved by removing the USB drive, which I've tried with no success.

Answer 1

Check the hard disk boot order in the system BIOS (Not the RAID controller BIOS utility). Perhaps it hasn't been updated since you created the RAID array. Windows won't install to a disk that isn't in the boot order.

Answer 2

Disks/Raid arrays can be set as bootable or not. Does the Intel raid manager/raid utility show the raid array as bootable drive? In NVidia raid utility there was an option to set raids as bootable or not. (There is also a size limit to bootable drives [2TB], but this shouldnt be the issue with your SSD disks.)