It’s not clean and it definitely is not pretty. I was able to get F9 64 bit installed on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3r ICH10r based system on an existing “FakeRAID”. I initially installed XP, used the floppy driver method and created a 2X500G WDC SATA II RAID0 array. Next I partitioned it and installed Vista Ultra 64 bit to the 2nd partition. I created a 3rd partition for storage, All NTFS.
I’ll give the cliff notes version.
Install F8 using the FULL DVD, not a live image. For some reason F8 correctly identifies the “FakeRAID” and even allows you to resize partitions and such. Once F8 is online and operational, use yum or your favorite package manager to update all of your software to the latest F8 versions. Helped me to remove the packages I do not use before that.
Insert F9 FULL DVD installer. Boot to it. I was fortunate. F9 recognized the EXT3 partitions on the “FakeRAID”.
Install was smooth. The boot after was a bit nerve racking. X did NOT start. Fortunately network services did start. Yum worked. I updated the packages by letter groups to keep the buffer from overflowing on Yum.
As so:
yum -y update a*
yum -y update b*…
And so on. Lots of library and dependency errors, but as I installed the updates the issues became fewer.
Now the system is Online and operational with the latest 64 bit F9 updates. Compiz and Emerald themes are working wonderfully well, and I can boot this beast to WIndows XP SP3 32bit, Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit, or F9 64bit as I desire.
Worth it?
When my “FakeRAID” allows data reads and writes in Vista at 187MB/s, I find there is definitely some benefit.
Your mileage may vary.
I’m not feeling Foolhardy enough to try F9 to F10 yet with this. That may be a good long time away in the future.