Setting up Win7 on Raid 0

[scope]

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 win7 pro.

I just bought 2 300gb velociraptors. I want to set them up in raid0. On this, I want to install win7.

I still want to keep my win xp as a secondary os, but want to get rid of win7 from the other drive.

Could someone guide me how I should do this? Does the win7 pro DVD contain software to create a raid setup? Thanks.

 

[scope]

Forgot to ask, will I be able to use the same win7 key that I currently have on the new raid0 installation?

 

[pparks1]

I still want to keep my win xp as a secondary os, but want to get rid of win7 from the other drive.

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

Could someone guide me how I should do this? Does the win7 pro DVD contain software to create a raid setup? Thanks.

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.

 

[Night Hawk]

Welcome to the Se7en 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.

 

[pparks1]

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.

 

[scope]

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 win7 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 win7 installed along with the softwares for video processing.

I know my motherboard supports RAIDs. However, I want to know if win7 disk comes with the software to create the actual array.

Thanks again for quick replies.

 

[Night Hawk]

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.

 

[RadioJoe]

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.

 

[Night Hawk]

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)

 

[bobkn]

Welcome to the Se7en 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!

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.

 

[bobkn]

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 win7 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 win7 installed along with the softwares for video processing.

I know my motherboard supports RAIDs. However, I want to know if win7 disk comes with the software to create the actual array.

Thanks again for quick replies.

You have at least two ways of producing a RAID array.

One of them is to use the RAID capabilities of your motherboard's SATA controller. (Incidentally, what is it?) My motherboard (see my system specs) has an Intel ICH10R controller. If the SATA controller is set to RAID in the BIOS settings, a menu becomes available to configure disks as arrays. (Multiple arrays can be created, but there are only 6 SATA ports on the ICH10R, so this is limited.) When a disk is added to the array, all of the data on the disk are lost. (I believe that no special preparation of the disk is required, as it's always wiped, in effect.)

If you install Win7 on a RAID array, you need to install the RAID drivers during the Windows installation. I don't know whether Win7 includes any RAID drivers, or whether you'll have to supply them on removable media. (XP required such drivers to be on a floppy. Vista improved that by allowing floppy, CD, or a USB flash drive. Win7 is the same as Vista in that regard.)

Win7 permits pure software RAID, which has the advantage of being independent of any controller hardware:

Information regarding Windows 7 software Raid : Alan's World Famous Blog V2

I've never used it. It's unclear to me whether Win7 can be used with software RAID on the OS drive.

You may wish to check whether the Velociraptors are ideal for your purpose. They are 10,000 RPM, and their seek times are good, but for continuous reads and writes, the higher platter densities of the large conventional drives (1-2TB) may give them competitive performance for video capture. (Plus larger capacity.)

 

[Night Hawk]

Welcome to the Se7en 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!

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.

I likely ended up with a Raid 1 configuration when looking at the RC set up. A mirrored array definitely will require identical drives in order to work.

One reference you might be interested in working with video is "How to Extend RAID to Enlarge Its Storage Capability?". Best solution to extend RAID, such as RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5,etc on Windows with the RAID partition software.

Another one is a blog on how good Raid is in Windows 7.

RAID on the Cheap: Windows 7 Software RAID vs. inexpensive “fake RAID”

How good is Windows 7 software RAID? Is it faster or slower than a cheap hardware controller (aka “fake RAID”)?

This past month I’ve realized the simultaneous need to add more hard drive storage and decrease the probability of losing the data stored within. While I fully realize that redundant hard disks are not a substitute for a backup, I do want to use a RAID array to reduce the likelihood that I have to restore that data from a backup. Also, I plan to put data on that disk that I would be annoyed to lose, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world (i.e. music, movies, etc.).

You see the rest of that one at RAID on the Cheap: Windows 7 Software RAID vs. inexpensive “fake RAID” at Kevin’s Blog