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Setting up a raid configuration for Windows 7

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by mikednnrd

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I read the article for setting up a flash drive to install Win 7 and I would like to set my configuration up for raid. Does anyone know if you could add the raid driver to the install files or would it need to be on a different disk? My motherboard is set up so I can specify which disks are raid and it also has a boot manager option during POST so I can choose which device to start up from (which can be hdd, flash, optical, etc.). I remember from earlier versions of windows you had to mannually add the raid driver at the install startup. Does Windows 7 still require this or will it automatically know that the disks are in raid sequence? I have always worked with single disk drive systems and I am wanting to expand my knowlege and will be trying this on my home system to test the benefits that I have read about raid systems. One last thing, is there any particular HDD size that seems to work better in raid (500GB compared to 2TB). I appreciate any opinions and help you can offer.

5 replies

by ---tk---

When you install Win 7 with a RAID.
1. You will need to enable the RAID controller in the BIOS of your Motherboard, refer to documentation to do so, or tinker around in there to find the correct settings.
2. after POST test, you will need to hit F5 or some F# to enter the RAID Controller configuration(it will prompt you).
3. After the RAID is set up on the drives and controller, you will have to have the Drivers on a USB or floppy drive, inserted into the PC, before you boot.
4. Boot to Win 7, load the drivers, once loaded, you will see only one drive, format and install Win 7.

From this point on, it should act like the RAIDed drives are one drive.

On RAIDed drives I always make c:\ the entire drive/s. But then again, I use 2 36 Gig raptors, and a RAID 0 so c:\ is around 70 Gigs.

What I would recommend for you is a RAID 1 or 0, depending on what you are doing (at first, then research RAID 5, 0+1, 10 if your interested)

RAID 0 = 2 HDD's the same size, stripped. If you have two 100 Gig drives, then the total size will be 200 Gigs. Where you get the performance is theoretically: you have a 10 MB file, 5 MB goes on HDD1 and the other 5 MB goes on HDD2. So when the PC requests that file it pulls faster, since there is less to transfer. Thats the basics...

RAID 1 = Again 2 100 Gig drives, mirrored. The total size will be 100 Gigs, because the data is mirrored. Meaning, again, 10 MB file that file is stored on BOTH HDD's. This is used for redundancy.**read time is just as fast as RAID 0, the write time is slightly slower.

RAID 1 is a little slower than a RAID 0, b/c it has to write the entire file in two places vs half here and half there. But if in a RAID 1, and HDD1 dies, the PC will still run because the same data is on HDD2. Shut down the PC, replace the bad drive, boot the pc and it will rebuild the RAID again, NO Data loss!

RAID 0 can be bad... You have to understand that if HDD1 goes down, everything is GONE! but it is a little faster....

Personally I always use a RAID 0 on my "fast" PC, because I have a file server that I always back up to. And I don't care about "stability" I want the SPEED...

Hopefully that helped. Post up if you have more questions.

by cg it

If you use RAID 5 and then partition out the RAID array, I recommend that you make the system partition at least 40 GB or more. Everytime you install a application even if you install it to a different partition, the application installs files to the system partition. Further, if you did not create a partition for log files, these to are saved to the system partition. over time this can cause a low free space problem.

Remember that the computer doesn't put files back in the exact same place it got it from so having to search a TB drive for the files it needs can impact system performance. But with todays dual and quad cores that might not be noticable.

other than that.... partition away...

by mikednnrd

I want to thank you for your input. It really helps a lot.

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