Windows 7 - Setting up Win7 on Raid 0

I have never done a raid setup before and I don't know how to go about doing that. That said, I currently have 2 drives in my system. One has win xp pro installed and another has Windows 7 pro.

I just bought 2 300gb velociraptors. I want to set them up in raid0. On this, I want to install Windows 7.

I still want to keep my win xp as a secondary os, but want to get rid of Windows 7 from the other drive.

Could someone guide me how I should do this? Does the Windows 7 pro DVD contain software to create a raid setup? Thanks.

Forgot to ask, will I be able to use the same Windows 7 key that I currently have on the new raid0 installation?

You will have to reinstall XP if you want to use it after configuring your 2 drives in a RAID 0 array.

As long as your mobo supports this, or you have a RAID card...during the POST process, you go in and configure your drives as a RAID 0 stripe. Once complete, you OS is going to see a 600GB drive in which you can install to.

Yes, you will be able to use the key when you reconfigure this machine.

Welcome to the Windows 7 Forums! scope

The first thing to know right from the start is the need for two identical drives(already covered with the two 300gbs) and the need to wipe everything from both drives to start a fresh setup. Note with Raid 0 both drives will act as one cutting the drive space in half!

Once you have both drive free of anything including partitions! you enter the bios setup with both drives hopefully plugged into the correct Secondary master/slave ports not Primary master/slave and enable the Raid option for that make and model board. From there the new "primaries" for each version are seen on what appears to be one drive.

Both drives will then share fragments of files for both installations. Note Raid 0 is best used for storage arrays while Raid 5 or for seeing one volume stretched across more then one drive "spanning the volume" something different all together is used there.

For a dual boot having each as a stand alone OS and then adding the XP boot option into the 7 bootloader would take advantage of the Raptor speeds and still allow for each drive to boot independently. The EasyBCD tool is generally the recommended option for setting up the dual boot.

The question probably should be asked, but
1). Do you really need a RAID 0 configuration?
2). What are you hoping to gain?

Depending upon how you use your computer, you may or may not see that much of an improvement from a RAID 0 configuration. However, by splitting everything across 2 drives, you increase your risk of disaster 2x since you have 2 drives now which could potentially fail...and the failure of just 1 of the drives results in a loss of data on both of them.

I am going to be running some video/audio compression software for live feeds from a few HD camcorders I have setup for a biology project. It will at specified intervals, upload those clips to my project page. So, speed is essential and that's why I want to go with RAID0.

Also, to clarify my OP, I have 4 drives right now.

1. 80g 7200rpm: has win xp
2. 1TB 5400rpm: has Windows 7 on one partition and the other partition is used primarily for storage.
3. and 4. Brand new unpartitioned 300gb velociraptors: this is where I would like to have Windows 7 installed along with the softwares for video processing.

I know my motherboard supports RAIDs. However, I want to know if Windows 7 disk comes with the software to create the actual array.

Thanks again for quick replies.

Once the Raid option is set in the bios the two 300gb drives will be synced together when a new primary is created. In order to break up an array afterwards you have to unplug one of the two and delete all partitions followed by unplugging that one to replug the other to do the same.

As far as speed is concerned you are not going to be seeing faster speeds with an array. For speed the options being looked at now are SSDs to surpass the ATA limitations. I have to agree with pparks1 on the one drive goes all lost problem to consider as well as arrays being best suited by businesses at this time for storage not for performance enhancement.

Windows 7 is known for having problems with the RAID 0 configuration. Not to say yours would not work, but I have tried multiple times with multiple drivers and Windows 7 would not recognize the setup. If you do get it to work, I would like to know.

I had the 64bit RC set up in a Raid 0 array last summer before some rearrangements which went right on without problems on the two WD Caviar SE 500gb drives. Once those were both plugged into the #3 + #4 ports the partitioning was done with GParted followed by the clean install of 7 without a hitch. No drivers needed!
(The updates took care of the chipset/sata controllers)

Huh? You obviously know more about RAID than I do, but this isn't correct.

In RAID 0 (striped), the pair of drives will appear as a single 600GB drive.

Also, the drives may not have to be identical, but the capacity of the pair would equal twice the capacity of the smaller disk.

You can also build a RAID 0 array from more than 2 disks; I don't recall whether an even number is required.