I know a couple people have complained about the RAID that comes preinstalled on these laptops - I thought I'd post my workaround, in case it might help someone. I wanted to dualboot Win7 Ultimate x64 and Kubuntu, with Win7 on drive 1, Kubuntu on 2, and drives 3 and 4 RAIDed together for storage. The problem was, Sony does not offer an OS Install disc for Windows, I did not have a legitimate OEM install disc (now I have one from Newegg) and the System Restore discs restore the Recovery partition (which I did not want) and the 4 disc RAID0 (which I DEFINITELY did not want).
One good thing about this method is that you will not have to install any Windows drivers for the laptop, as you would if you tried to use a third party OEM Win7 install disc. You'll need Norton Ghost v15, a new Sony Z series laptop, an external drive, and a few blank DVDs. Here's how you break apart the RAID array and install the version of Win7 that Sony supplied you with on a single disc without an OS install CD (I'm still working on installing Kubuntu): 1. Get laptop, but up into Windows 7 2. Make restore discs (just in case) (you can skip this step if your computer shipped with a set - mine didn't) 3. Make repair disc 4. Install Norton Ghost 5. Back up System and Main partition to external drive with Norton Ghost (ignore the Restore partition, unless you want it for some reason) 6. Restart computer, split apart RAID0 array (all data on the 4 discs lost) 7. Get GParted and format disc 1 in NTFS with 1 100 MB partition and 1 large other NTFS Partition (Gparted graphics do not actually work right, so you may need an external monitor for this step. I hooked up an external mouse, squinted my eyes, and just lived with the weird graphics for a few minutes.) 8. Use the Ghost Boot Recovery Disk and Ghost the System partition to the 100 MB drive and the main partition onto the rest of the drive. Make sure the system partition is active. 9. Restart. The MBR will be corrupted, since you essentially installed Windows on a system with the same hardware, but a completely 'different' hard drive. 10. System will not start, and asks for the restore CD - put in the cd, and it will fix the MBR. You now have a working Win 7 install with no RAID - no OS install disc required! Yay! -- This message was sent from Launchpad by the user Zithras (https://launchpad.net/~zithras) using the "Contact this team" link on the Sony Vaio Z-series Laptop team page. For more information see https://help.launchpad.net/YourAccount/ContactingPeople _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
