RAID with Windows XP Home

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buzzarant

Greetings all,

I'm attempting some tech support from afar as I'm in London and the
machine in question is in Melbourne.

I gave my PC to my brother when it came to the UK. It has 2 x 60Gb hard
drives set up in a striped RAID configuration and has been running
quite happily for some time with a dodgy copy of Windows XP
professional.

My brother panicked when he got the "This is not a legit copy" message
from Windows update, and so went out and bought a legit copy of Windows
XP HOME. He has tried to install HOME over XP and has hit a bit of a
brick wall - HOME doesn't seem to recognise any of the hard drives.
The RAID drivers are boxed up somewhere which neither of us have access
to.

So my questions are:

1) Is this a simple case of downloading the driver and this will solve
all?
2) Can the RAID setup on XP Home, or will my brother have to go out and
buy Professional?
3) Or my least favorite - option 3 - remove the RAID setup so that the
2 drives appear separately to Windows - thus losing all data on the
machine..

I'd appreciate any feedback..

Cheers,
bigmontag
 
Greetings all,

I'm attempting some tech support from afar as I'm in London and the
machine in question is in Melbourne.

I gave my PC to my brother when it came to the UK. It has 2 x 60Gb hard
drives set up in a striped RAID configuration and has been running
quite happily for some time with a dodgy copy of Windows XP
professional.

My brother panicked when he got the "This is not a legit copy" message
from Windows update, and so went out and bought a legit copy of Windows
XP HOME. He has tried to install HOME over XP and has hit a bit of a
brick wall - HOME doesn't seem to recognise any of the hard drives.
The RAID drivers are boxed up somewhere which neither of us have access
to.

So my questions are:

1) Is this a simple case of downloading the driver and this will solve
all?
2) Can the RAID setup on XP Home, or will my brother have to go out and
buy Professional?
3) Or my least favorite - option 3 - remove the RAID setup so that the
2 drives appear separately to Windows - thus losing all data on the
machine..

I'd appreciate any feedback..

Cheers,
bigmontag
Click to expand...

I'm afraid your problems start here...XPHome will not copy over XPPro...

break your stripe , move data to one drive , then do a clean install of
XPHome (on the other drive)...then move your data back (use can use
F.A.S.T.)

you can worry about the Raid setup once you have a working system..
 
Haggis said:
I'm afraid your problems start here...XPHome will not copy over XPPro...

break your stripe , move data to one drive , then do a clean install of
XPHome (on the other drive)...then move your data back (use can use
F.A.S.T.)

you can worry about the Raid setup once you have a working system..
Click to expand...

So it's not possible to simply uninstall XPProf and do a fresh install
of XPHome?

A colleague suggested that XPHome might not be able to deal with the
RAID setup - any truth to that?
 
Greetings all,

I'm attempting some tech support from afar as I'm in London and the
machine in question is in Melbourne.

I gave my PC to my brother when it came to the UK. It has 2 x 60Gb
hard drives set up in a striped RAID configuration and has been
running quite happily for some time with a dodgy copy of Windows XP
professional.

My brother panicked when he got the "This is not a legit copy" message
from Windows update, and so went out and bought a legit copy of
Windows XP HOME. He has tried to install HOME over XP and has hit a
bit of a brick wall - HOME doesn't seem to recognise any of the hard
drives. The RAID drivers are boxed up somewhere which neither of us
have access to.

So my questions are:

1) Is this a simple case of downloading the driver and this will solve
all?
Click to expand...


Yes. But see below.

2) Can the RAID setup on XP Home,

Yes.


or will my brother have to go out
and buy Professional?
Click to expand...


Maybe, but not for that reason. See below.

3) Or my least favorite - option 3 - remove the RAID setup so that the
2 drives appear separately to Windows
Click to expand...


That's not necessary, but...

- thus losing all data on the
machine..
Click to expand...


....unfortunately going from XP Professional to Home is a downgrade, and
downgrades aren't supported. There's no way to get Home on the machine
except by a clean installation, and a clean installation means reformatting
the drive and losing all the data on the drive. He needs to backup all his
data first, then download the RAID drivers and put them on a diskette,
install XP Home cleanly, restore his backed up data, and reinstall all his
software.
 
So it's not possible to simply uninstall XPProf and do a fresh install
of XPHome?

A colleague suggested that XPHome might not be able to deal with the
RAID setup - any truth to that?
Click to expand...


see Ken's post :>
 
Yes. But see below.




Maybe, but not for that reason. See below.




That's not necessary, but...




...unfortunately going from XP Professional to Home is a downgrade, and
downgrades aren't supported. There's no way to get Home on the machine
except by a clean installation, and a clean installation means reformatting
the drive and losing all the data on the drive. He needs to backup all his
data first, then download the RAID drivers and put them on a diskette,
install XP Home cleanly, restore his backed up data, and reinstall all his
software.
Click to expand...

Thanks all for your feedback. So it sounds like I have two main
options here:

1) Stick with XP Home and do what Ken has suggested above. or
2) Buy XP Professional and all this will go away.

Can someone kindly confirm that this is the case?
 
Can someone kindly confirm that this is the case?
Click to expand...

Ken is right on the money.

If you want to install windows xp home, backup your data from the RAID,
install fresh copy of xp home and put data back.

If you buy xp profesional you wont have to do any reinstalling and can
just use a key changer and enter the new legit key from the box.
 
Ken is right on the money.

If you want to install windows xp home, backup your data from the RAID,
install fresh copy of xp home and put data back.

If you buy xp profesional you wont have to do any reinstalling and can
just use a key changer and enter the new legit key from the box.
Click to expand...

Update: my brother bought XP Professional and all is fine and dandy..
Thanks again to all for your help.

Cheers.
 
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