Windows 7 - Windows 7 Ult 64 Custom build: bios and windows install questions

Hey everyone,

I'm sorry if I post this in the wrong forum, but I have a few questions about setting up the bios and installing windows.

This is the computer that I am building for video production:

Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Corsair Core i7 XMS3 12GB
5 Samsung 1 TB Spinpoint 7200 RPM
Antec Nine Hundred Two Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
NVIDIA FX 1800

Now I want to use 1 of the Hard drives as my boot drive. And I want to set the other 4 hd's to raid 0.

How do I go about doing this?

Thank you,

kyle

Well, there are several ways to do this, although initially, you should just consider building up your system with the 1 disk first,getting it stable and functional before we worry about throwing the other 4 HDs into the system and RAID 0 them in.

I would also take into consideration the following with regards to the RAID you have in mind... Given you are planning on doing video production and having 4 disks in a RAID 0 configuration, is your case designed to have a removable Hard drive cages.

If not, I would recommend getting it because of the simple fact that if and when one of those drives fail for your RAID 0 array, the time it takes to pull the machine out, open it up, discover the bad disk in the group, replace it, close it up and rebuild the array to be functional again will be about 10 times longer than having a case where you have a 4 disk removable drive bay array in front where you can pull the obviously bad disk from the drive array, replace it within the cage, put it back in and rebuild the array. Less hassle of trying to figure out the drives and also less hassle pulling the system out to replace one bad drive from the array.

Now, assuming you have done this and setup the system drive, you can then tack on the 4 drives, assuming the board supports RAID and you properly identified those drives for the RAID array and built it, you should be able to get windows to see the RAID array. You should also make sure you have the Windows 7 Drivers for the motherboard ready, just in case if the system seems sluggish with regards to array system.

Another thing to consider - I believe Windows 7 has a native ability to do RAID 0, 1 and 5 if you want to have Windows handle the RAID. Again, make sure you do the Windows 7 setup first with just the one disk you want the OS, then mount the 4 drives and have the Disk Management setup the RAID array for those disks.

I am not so sure the BIOS will be 'better' than the Software RAID implementation of RAID 0, so you may have to do some testing and benchmarking first, the slow point being the building and formatting of the RAID array.

One Word of caution with Regards to RAID 0... Remember - If ONE of those disks fails, your data is fubared. If you want Redundancy, you will want RAID 1+0, which is Striping and Mirroring. This will allow you to lose up to 2 disks, provided the second disk isn't the mirror of the first disk that failed. The drawback is that you will have only half the effective throughput and half the disks you would have had in a RAID 0 Configuration.

Just install windows 7 on the first disk. When the installation is done use the Disk Manager to initiate, format and create your RAID 0 (or striped disks).

But I would also recommend you to use a RAID 1 + 0 (mirroed and striped).

Regards, iBunne

Thank you guys. Just got my computer built and am going through the bios. Quick question, how should I configure Sata? as IDE or ACHI?

For now, AHCI. You don't really have any devices that would need IDE.

Great. That's what I was leaning towards, just wanted to double check. Thanks for all of the help!