Win 8: Adding a boot volume to an MBR dynamic disk [NOT about changing to basic disks]
- by Stilez
(This is NOT aiming to convert to basic disk. In this question, the disk stays dynamic but becomes bootable)
There doesn't seem to be a clear, well stated answer I can find, for the question "What are the criteria for Windows 8 to successfully boot from an MBR dynamic disk", or "how do I fix a dynamic MBR partition that's failing boot"? I've tried to educate myself but can't find crucial information to clear it all up.
My existing HDD/SSD setup:
DISK 0 ~ 60GB SSD/MBR/basic: (350MB recovery)(60GB windows 8 bootable)
DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data)
DISK 2 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data)
DISKS 3, 4, 5: (ignored for simplicity: 2xHDD RAID1 + caching SSD)
I'm heavy duty on data crunching and virtualisation, just maxxed out 32GB RAM @ 2133 and moved to 4960X + 64GB. Disk 0 is a pure system disk of little value, and virtualisations runs off mirrored SSDs (Samsung 840 Pro 512 x 2) for double speed reading and so they snapshot in reasonable time.
I'm using 4 SATA3 ports and the board only has two decent Intel ports (onboard Marvell are poorer quality). I'm wary of choosing between LSI, HighPoint and other 3rd party controllers as I'm unfamiliar with the maze of decent RAID cards (that's a whole other issue!). I want to cut down my SSD needs by moving the boot volume and caching volume to the 840 pros, giving a setup with 2 fewer SSDs:
DISK 0 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB boot)(410GB mirrored data)
DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(30GB cache for the ICH10R mirror)(30GB temp)(410GB mirrored data)
DISKS 2, 3: (2xHDD RAID1)
Intel's RST allows this, Win 8 allows booting off a MBR/dynamic disk, and the two 60GB SSDs are hardly the fastest SSDs anyway, they'll get repurposed. Moving the caching volume is easy. Moving the boot volume has me stumped.
The difficulty is, I'm hitting a wall of knowledge here. I have a UEFI Asus motherboard with an previous traditional MBR/basic boot disk, and I want it to boot from a disk and volume that's MBR/dynamic. The disk copy is physically ok (Partition Wizard Server will copy to dynamic volumes) but then hits a light blue 0xc000000e boot error.
No real surprise, I expected to have some boot fixing, but had expected Windows to boot-fix it (all drivers exist), or the usual manual fixes to work.
Specifically, I don't know enough, to know what's got to be manually checked and perhaps corrected for the disk to boot (legacy/uefi/bios, odd partitions, boot tables, disk IDs, hidden boot files, oh my!), or if I need to change any of this secure boot/UEFI/legacy stuff in the bios, convert a 512 SSD to basic and then back to dynamic when working, or if the issue is pure OS config using "diskpart", "bootsect" and "bootrec" from the Win8 DVD. The old system disk still boots but I don't know enough to figure what to fix, to make the system boot as I want.
The answers probably aren't hard but the real issue is my confusion and missing information. Thanks for helping!
