Lenovo D20, Type 4155-21G With 5x1.5tb Raid 5, Windows 7 64bit install problem.

Question

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Id like to just document a current machine and works and see if any thing is glaringly wrong..
Above spec machine has an onboard marrvel 66xx raid card, a raid 5 volume has been created, total useable space is around 5.5TB.
The software in play here is the following..
Orignal Lenovo recovery disk set, this is Rescue and recovery boot disk 1, then the OS which is Vista 32 Business, the disk label is actual 64bit but its not 64bit its 32bit.
The machine finally has to leave with Windows 7 64bit ultimate.
I have looked into the upgrade paths and so on and basicly you need vista 64bit ultimate in theory, certain hacks are possible such as renaming the os level or name via the registery, but this is dirverting from my post.
Here is what has been done and what has happend.
20th Jan.
Start of day.
Raid 5 volume created.
Factory recovery completed windows vista business 32bit.
Attempt to upgrade Windows vista business to Windows 7 ultimate from with in windows, windows 7 alerts this is not a compatable system etc.
At this stage since the 64bit upgrade is not possible from the known good lenovo state (lenovo vista business factory desktop etc) the second disks in the "Windows 7 32bit + 64bit any time upgrade package was ran.
The 32bit version of the Windows 7 ultimate was ran, this did complete sucessfully.
The 64bit version of the windows 7 was attempted once more from with in the newly installed Windows 7 32 bit but again this upgrade route is not supported.
At this stage a custom install was completed (which means a fresh install which wipes the drive) / fresh install, of the windows 7 64bit any time upgrade disk.
For some reason the Windows 7 64bit any time upgrade key failed to be accepted.
At this stage a second engineer repeated all steps completed to verify and on the second go around the FRESH install of Windows 64bit any time upgrade (stand alone install / custom etc) the key worked!..
This is were it gets interesting.
Lets recap, we have a D20 with 5x1.5tb sata hard drives in raid 5, all on the onboard marvel raid card.
Windows 7 64bit has been sucessfully installed, and of course the next step is to install the lenovo system update tool. (version for windows 7, I understand this is fully 64bit compatable..)
This was completed and pc doctor and one other misc application install, the system requested to restart and then ....
The raid BIOS of the marvel card reported that the raid had become degraded..!!
An inspection of the onboard raid information results that the disk 0 of the 5 disks, was no longer assigned to the RAID 5, with teh remaining several disks still "assigned".
At this stage the only option is to delete the raid five array and recreate it.
This has been done and the factory recovery process has once again been restarted and an attempt will be made to perform the custom install with hopefully the windows 7 64bit any time upgrade install detecting the previous version although I would say that it would not need to detect anything since this is now longer an upgrade but a custom fresh install.
Further information.
There is a System bios update from the 5th of Jan 2010, this has been burnt to cd and will be applyed against the machine shortly.
We have had some conversation about just how it is that a disk can fatally pop out from the raid five volume like this, was it a coincidence that it coninsided with the power cycle process dirrectly after the system update installation?
Tommorow a Windows 64bit OEM package will be applied against this machine and since we have the relivant driver file for the onboard raid card (sourced from the drivers and applications lenovo recovery disk set), there should be less of a problem in key acceptance.
Kind of a werid situation, what looks like a possible hardware problem and a stupid microsoft upgrade qulification problem.
Is there any thing stupid I have over looked?
Thanks, sorry for the long post but this is the story in full.
Note from Moderator:  Fixed formatting issue.

Answer 1

21st Jan..
The D20 has sucessfully had vista business factory reinstalled and then Windows 7 64bit installed.
Dirrectly after the Windows 7 installation and power cycle, one of the five 1.5tb hard drives have dropped out of the raid, visable as "DEGRADED", uppon further inspection via control m, the middle drive (not drive 0 as before) drive 2 (0,1,2,3,4,5) has dropped out and is not marked as assigned, it is marked with no label or free.
This is high strangeness, it is my understanding that the RAID technologies are transparent to the OS so it should not be in any way the Windows 7 install triggering this, the last occurance was also during a Windows 7 power cycle but dirrectly after the system update tool being installed.
At this stage it would appear that Windows 7 64-bit used in conjunction with the supplment driver disk marked as (drivers and apps, windows xp vista, windows 7) is not able to complete and remain stable.
I suspect a possible driver issue but if this was the case surely the windows 7 install would not progress past the first installation point where the driver disks is required to actually use and see the array via the controler.
I will update this thread with more information as it becomes available.
Machine delivery eta to customer is tommorow so this is not good.