sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Zithras <Zithras@xxxxxxxxx>]

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!
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