Almost no response from windows 7..angry wife

Was not aware you are running a RAID array. I will leave it up to you if you want to keep it. Just know that we have many problems reported here with installing Win7 to a RAID array. However you could choose to break RAID only if you encounter these problems.

Normally to break the RAID:
Go into the RAID boot menu and delete/reset the RAID pair.
Go into the bios and change from RAID to AHCI
Remove all but one target HD to install Win7.

To learn exactly how this works on your mobo, read your Manual at the Dell Support Downloads website for your tag number. You need to fully understand how RAID works including its benefits for you since you can choose to continue using it.

Others may have better advice for you on this.

That's the issue in the BIOS there is no choice to go from RAID to ACHI only Auto Detect RAID/ATA. I have just found a post elsehwere where someone said that the XPS 720 chipset was to oold for ACHI. Is that why it doesn't show up or are there some drivers that need installing?

I am pretty confident there is no reason to keep the RAID0 for this pc and seperate drives would be more useful.

Ah now i fin d another post saying this:

Dell tends to be minimalist in its BIOS settings, and RAID mode for your 8100 seems to be just the same as the 430 original to this thread - basically the Dell BIOS RAID mode "doubles up" as meaning AHCI with only one drive.

Sounds like I clear the array with the Intel Storage Manager but leave the BIOS setting to RAID! However it's as clear as mud. Also I have found referrence to registry changes to allow AHCI.

Is this what they are getting at?

Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

masplin said:

That's the issue in the BIOS there is no choice to go from RAID to ACHI only Auto Detect RAID/ATA. I have just found a post elsehwere where someone said that the XPS 720 chipset was to oold for ACHI. Is that why it doesn't show up or are there some drivers that need installing?

I am pretty confident there is no reason to keep the RAID0 for this pc and seperate drives would be more useful.

Actually, the XPS 720 uses nForce based board, which does not have AHCI included in theirs, so there is no way to use it.

I have my system (XPS 720) using RAID1 setup (Mirrored, not spanned) for the purpose of redundancy support. I haven't had problems getting it up and running, although I made sure I had the drivers for it installed to reduce the twitchiness.

The XPS 720 uses nForce and not Intel, so the results will vary.

I would recommend that if you are deadset on having a raid, don't do RAID 0, do RAID 1, as RAID 1 is mirroring. While yes, it means you waste a disk on redundancy, it is better that one disk fails and you can still run versus 1 disk that fails and your entire system goes to crap.

If you absolutely need the space, you are better off just getting a newer, larger disk. I never would trust the system with a striped RAID without redundancy. If you need striped performance with redundancy, you will want to do a Raid 0+1 or Raid 10 configuration, which is mirror+striping.

My first guess is that originally, the system was setup with RAID, probably to get the most out of space, but you probably don't want to have your system built that way. I usually recommend building the system with a mirrored System Disk or a single drive system. If Space is the 'must have'... You can do Raid 0 for DATA SPACE, but never for OS. Dells should have 4 drive bays, so task 1 bay to be your SYS drive, and RAID 0 your 3 remaining spaces (Although I rather recommend RAID 5... It will not help performance wise, but at least if one drive fails, you don't lose your data horribly because one disk failed and took 1/2 to 1/3 of your data in the process.

While you could also do Raid 5 to cover all 4 drives (3 striped, 1 parity), performance suffers in that designation.

First thing you might want to consider, as a test, is break the raid. Reinstall the OS on a single drive and see if the system is twitchy then. If it seems stable, perhaps just image the drive and put it off to the side, use the 3 remaining bays to make a nice sizable data and app drive using a Raid 5 config for the wife and see if she is happy with that. If you are more concerned with having her with a redundant System in case the system drive has a failure, you should be able to install the system with the RAID configuration, but be prepared to replace the Drive controller drivers with the Dell or Manufacturer's latest drivers to take the twitchiness out of the equation. (Although I am leaning towards you will need those drivers for either RAID configuration.)

What are the exact performance benefits for having these HD's all interlocked in this way so that everything fails if one fails? Wouldn't a single Win7 SSD surpass it anyway without the mess?

Be sure to unplug all but the target HD, then wipe and format it if you break the RAID: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

gregrocker said:

What are the exact performance benefits for having these HD's all interlocked in this way so that everything fails if one fails? Wouldn't a single Win7 SSD surpass it anyway without the mess?

Be sure to unplug all but the target HD, then wipe and format it if you break the RAID: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

Well, from what people are lead to believe is with having a RAID 0, you are effectively multiplying your access rate, as data being striped across disks, and now with sata, you are no longer waiting nearly as much for data due to slow disks, but getting data at Nx where N == drives striped, presuming data is divided up equally across that space. The draw back is that if one drive fails, you basically lose 1/N of the data, with no redundancy, it is then a loss of data.

Raid 5 allows for space spanning (Which is where RAID 0 would come in handy as well), but uses 1 drive as a redundancy parity check. You don't gain the performance gain of RAID 0 due to the fact that you are also creating a parity check on the last drive so that if one drive fails, it you don't lose your data as the parity then makes up for the drive that failed.

The best performance and spanning is RAID 10, where you have the RAID 0 spanning and performance access, but you use twice the number of disks to provide mirroring, so if one of the drives fails, it falls back to its mirror to sustain it.

These are generally used mostly with servers, but for die hard, I can't afford to be down a day in my life type computer users, they would use at least RAID 1 for the system drive.

I know a few people who have used RAID 0 just cause of the performance wish, but not realizing that they shoot themselves in the foot if one of those drives failed.