Boot from HD of bigger cluster size than 4KB

[Frank]

Hello,
We need to boot XP PRO SP2 on RAID which supprt only 8KB - 128KB cluster size.
As I found out, SP2 is unable to boot from HD other than of 4kb cluster size.
How we can solve It?
Is it a problem only XP SP2?
There are some other posts for installing XP or XP SP1 and then aplly SP2.
Can this be right solution?
Is It possible to extract SP2 from original Win XP PRO SP2 installatin CD?
I mean reversal the integrate process of SP2 to SP1 installatio CD.
Can SP3 support to boot from HD of 8-128KB? There is no such information
obout SP3.
Can You help us to solve this?
Thank You
Frank

 

[Anteaus]

Never heard of this problem.

Certainly if you CHANGE the cluster-size with one of various utilities, the
OS will no longer boot until you run FIXBOOT on it. This is because the
bootstrap code (NTLDR) is addressed as an absolute cluster-number.

In your case, it may be that you need to supply the driver for this RAID
array on a floppy (Yes, a floppy on a RAID server, in 2008!) You press F6
during the second part of setup to do this.

Point of fact I prefer to boot the server OS from a standard disk, this
makes taking an image of it so much easier. Data is better protected by RAID
1/5/10, but with the OS it's more of a question of "If it breaks can I fix it
the same day... or a week later?"