ICH9R Boot Failure

[idata]

Two weeks ago one drive in my raid 0 array (vista 64 boot) began throwing errors, so I installed a 3rd sata drive, non-raid, installed vista 64 and began migrating data/programs. The failing raid array and the new drive were dual booting without issue, typical "choose your OS" screen with every startup.

Today, after finally being content with getting what I needed from the old drives, went into the ICH9R raid controller and deleted the raid array in preparation to wipe and reformat the old drives. Now, I'm unable to boot from the new drive with vista installed, "disk boot failure... etc" message. Disconnected everything but new drive, still no luck. Drive is recognized in bios and first in boot priority. Tried switching controller from RAID to ACHI mode, no change. Attempted using different sata ports, including different controller, no change. MB is a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 with an Intel ICH9R controller. Raid array and new drive were both on same controller, along with 2 optical drives. Second controller on MB is a gigabyte sata2 which has always been unused. Rest of setup is in signature. New drive is a 1tb WD caviar black. Thanks in advance!

System:

Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4

Q6600

8gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800

MSI NX8800GT 512mb

Vista Ultimate 64bit

2x Raptor 150 Raid 0

WD Caviar 500gb sata

XFi Platinum Fatality

PCPC 750 silencer

[idata]

I know this is a bit late, but it goes like this:

a) 2 drives > one volume.

b) Install OS. Volume is now bootable

c) Add second volume. First volume is still bootable.

d) Install second OS. Since the first volume is bootable, the OS will add itself to the boot sequence of the previous OS (thus the menu to choose OS. If each disk would have an independent OS, the disk selected to boot would determine OS). To achieve independent disks, you need to disable the other disk in BIOS before installing the other OS. Setting boot order will do nothing.

e) Break the raid. Now you have 2 destroyed drives and a drive with an OS that will not boot because it was never bootable, it just hosted the OS

Your options (well, not yours, since in a week or so you probably already fixed it) are as follow:

* Remove the broken drives and use a Vista disk to repair the already-installed Vista (fixmbr)

* Install Vista over the old one (disk 2)

Well, there's the third drive, moving the drive to another pc, but really, it's broken now, you have to start over.

When installing OSs, remember, the active drive hosts the startup of all installed OSs. Next time disable the other drives.

When moving disks, remember, data you don't have a backup of is data you don't want.

Oh, and this tip is free for you (it wasn't for me): Backups fail when you restore because when you don't restore you don't know they're broken. When migrating data, I have 2 copies at all times. One I restore form and one I never touch. If the primary backup becomes broken, I copy the data over from backup 2 then restore from backup 2. Restoration tools are able to break backups.