Hi Tony,

When using RAID on a newly built system, there are considerations to take 
into account first.

The first questions is whether to use RAID at all, or simply have separate 
drives. There are good reasons for and against.

For example, if you want a single large drive, then using RAID to stripe or 
concatenate 2 or more drives will do this. If you want to potentially 
increase access speed, then a striped set will help achieve that.

You also need to consider if you are using a mirror setup. If you don't, 
and have a striped or concatenated partition, then if one drive fails, all 
the data is likely gone, especially with a striped set.

Having said all that, and if you decide to proceed, then the steps depend 
on your particular motherboard or RAID controller. Most motherboards with 
onboard RAID have a setup in the BIOS to enable RAID. Then you usually have 
to enter into a RAID setup, also through the BIOS to define the actual RAID 
sets. Once this is done, then you can start installing the OS. The RAID set 
will appar as a single drive letter, but you must load the Windows driver 
for it during the install. You will get an opportunity during Windows 
installation to "Hit F6 to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver". You 
need to do this, and it will later ask for the OEM driver diskette. This 
should have come with your motherboard. It might be on a CD and you have to 
run a program on the CD to build the OEM diskette. If you don't load the 
specific driver in this case, Windows will be unable to find the disk volume.

Everything else should install normally.

HTH,

Russ Poffenberger
[log in to unmask]

At 06:13 AM 5/18/2006, you wrote:
>I'm just about ready to install windows XP professional into a newly built 
>system. Confusion abounds. I have 4 WD2500HD I want to run as Raid 
>0,1.Should this array be configured before the windows install ? Is C 
>drive all 4 of these drives or just one? In other words is windows going 
>to install on all 4 drives striped/mirrored or what? I'm not sure how to 
>partition these drives.  When I put my created boot up disk in floppy, do 
>I save bios immediately before I make any changes? Can anyone please help? 
>I don't want to screw this up. Thanks, Tony.

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