intro/questions

Hey there, I just joined up and thought I'd say hi to the forum.

I'm building a brand new system this week (specs filled out) and thought I'd try out Win 7!

I have been doing a lot of reading and I just found this site tonight. It's awesome. I have already learned some great info just browsing around.

On to some questions. I've built a few systems, and done my share of fresh windows installs, but I've never set up a RAID array before. Sounds like it's pretty easy with Win 7, huh? I just set up the RAID in the BIOS then the windows install will load the drivers for me? No installing third party drivers from a floppy/usb?

Which build should I install? I didn't even realize there was more than one 'til reading this forum. I have 7100 on a disk right now, just because that is the one that I got from the MS download page. Should I re-download and get the latest, 7229?

Hi DUB and a warm welcome to the forum.
Can't help you with the RAID thing as I've no experience there.
As for the builds to my mind there was a noticeable improvement between 7100 and 7127 in terms of percieved speed but that could be subjective.
I'm now on 7229 and I can't tell any difference.
At this stage in the game you are probably better sticking with 7100 as that was official. All these other builds are technically stolen, although I reckon MS are allowing it to build the buzz around W7.
7100 will get upgrades if there are any and RTM should be along soon.

best wishes, john:)

I installed my first RAID array with the Win7 beta (installed Vista first, then upgraded to the Win7 beta). I also installed the Win7 beta "clean" and the Win7 RC "clean". It was simple as long as I followed the directions (I have a HighPoint RocketRAID 2310 card).

The most important thing is to ensure that you've got Windows 7 drivers for the card. You may be able to get Windows Vista drivers to work - but there are differences in the functions of the storage system in Win7.

I mention this because of my RAID card. It has minor issues with Win7 (it will crash if I attempt to put it to sleep - and it's not as fast as it was in Vista). I submitted a bug report for it, and both the report and the Microsoft feedback indicated it was a driver problem with the RAID card. So, I contacted HighPoint - and was told that they weren't going to develop Win7 drivers for this card.

I've purchased a new card (that has Win7 drivers) and will install it when the official RTM build is released (I'll have access to it through either Connect or TechNet/MSDN).

Welcome to the forums dub.

RAID is quite simple to install especially with Windows 7. Heck even if your hardware does not match the drivers that comes packaged in with Windows 7, you can load it up from a usb drive because Windows will stop during install and inform you of a hardware conflict and you just point it to the drivers you have on your usb stick and off you go.

Feel free to post any questions you have on this forum because its absolutely excellent.

I did not want to start a whole new post for this question.

Will any of these builds be available through windows update ever, or do I have to re-install windows 7 again?

llavoe said:

I did not want to start a whole new post for this question.

Will any of these builds be available through windows update ever, or do I have to re-install windows 7 again?

Not quite sure what you mean, but if you mean the builds of Windows 7 that have been leaked so far then no.

llavoe said:

or do I have to re-install windows 7 again?

once the final version is released, reinstalling from scratch would be a good idea. Take it from someone who has used Windows for a long time... it always works better from clean install (upgrade takes forever and leaves a mess on your hard drive).

Agreed. The leaked builds will no longer work soon after the final product is available.
If you have Vista there may be a cheaper upgrade option to W7.
As the previous poster said a fresh install would be best but apparently you can do this with an upgrade version by installing it and not activating it.
It will do a clean install which will work for 30 days.
On day 29 you do an upgrade install and activate it.
Should save a bit of money and that's what I intend to do.

Cheers, john:)

raid 0 is best performing
raid 5 is good performing and with redundancy (a single drive failure does not cause you to lose all data like RAID 0 would)

See RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most motherboards have what we call "fake RAID". Real RAID is better because it uses dedicated CPU and memory. Much more expensive though.