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What exactly is UEFI and why is it stopping me from installing Win10?
I have the following components:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X38-DS5
4x WD20EARS HDDs
Using the onboard Intel Matrix RAID Controller, I setup the drives in RAID5.
So I want to install Windows 10 on the 4 WD HDDs, which are in RAID5. I know the motherboard is old, but it still works, is quick, and would cost a lot to replace, so why not?
I downloaded the Microsoft Windows 10 image using the Image Creation Tool which created a nice little package on my USB key. So far so good. I boot the USB key into the Windows 10 setup and get to the part where it asks me to choose a drive to install to. I'm presented with one drive, Drive0, which is 5589GB in size. Automatically, setup shows a warning "Windows can't be installed on this
drive" and clicking Show Details shows the warning "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu".
I Shift-F10 to get into the CMD and run DISKPART and created a new partition. When I went back to the setup, the new 5589GB partition was ready, however the waning had changed to "Windows can't be installed on drive0 partition1 and clicking on Show Details shows the warning "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of type GPT partition style....".
Ok, at this point I am thinking that due to the age of the motherboard, it does not have UEFI and thus does not support booting from a GPT disk.
I went back into the Intel Matrix RAID setup and deleted the RAID configuration and this time created a RAID5 with only 3 disks, leaving 1 2TB drive free.
I again ran Setup and this time it presented me with the following disks:
Drive0 Partition1 Size=579MB Type=System
Drive0 Partition2 Size=1862GB Type Primary
Drive1 Unallocated Space Size=3726GB Type=Blank
I was now able to select the Drive0 Partition2 and install Windows10. Yay! Gr8. But this is not where I wanted to install the OS- on a single stand-alone disk.
So what happened? Why did it work this time. It looks to me like the Setup would not install on a partition which was greater than 1862GB when the motherboard is not UEFI. Does this make sense?
I tried again, still using the 1862GB single drive and the 3726GB RAID5 drive, using DISKPART I deleted all partitions on the RAID5 drive, converted it to MBR, and created a new primary 1953GB
partition. I now have the following options in Setup:
Drive0 Unallocated Space Size=1863GB Type=Blank -> This is the single 2TB drive.
Drive1 Partition1 Size=1953.1GB Type=Primary
Drive1 Unallocated Space Size=94.9GB Type=Blank
Drive1 Unallocated Space Size=1678GB Type=Blank
Automatically, setup shows a warning "Windows can't be installed on this drive" and clicking Show Details shows the warning "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu". However, when I press the Next button, Windows installs on the Primary partition!?
What the?
So this time, I went back into the Intel Matrix RAID setup and deleted the RAID group and created a new RAID5 drive using all 4 2TB drives, resulting in a disk of 5500GB. My guess is that if break this drive down to 2TB partitions, I can install Windows onto one of them.
DISKPART would not allow me to create any partitions above the 2TB limit, which meant that my drive could have the primary 2TB partition, but could not use the rest of the disk. And it seems that because there is more than 2TB of unused space on the disk, Window just does not like this and will not install.
So what's going on?
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