Help needed installing OS / Formatting drives?

[refractoryman]

I'll be receiving the parts to start my new i7 920 build shortly. I am going to install (3) hard drives in a non raid set up. My "C" boot and App's drive is a SATA 640gb Western Digital Black hdd. Data files and back-ups and so on will be stored on (2) SATA 1gb Western Digital Black hdd's. The mb is a ASUS P6T SE with 6gb ram. OS is Vista Home Premium 64bit. My question is how to get started once I put the rig together? Do I need to set the bios to boot in any special order? Do I install one SATA drive at a time? Do the drives need to be formatted first? Should the "C" drive be partioned?............ As you can see I am week in this area and really need some help. Is there somewhere in Tom's Hardware with step by step instructions or another site to reference? Your help and advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[silversurfernhs]

It's pretty straight forward, i'm sure there is an easy to understand guide out there on the interwebs...
I do recommend running the power supply alone first, ya know like plug it into a wall, and turn it on for a few minutes, so as to not surge your system the first time ou try and boot.

You dont need to worry about installing drives one by one or anything like that.

Are you installing XP or Vista?

They both can be installed from a CD, so you would need to access your systems boot menu when it POSTS the first time you turn it on, and then tell it to boot from CD-Rom, otherwise you can just access your Bois (usually delete key, or f1 key) and change the boot order.

When running the setup for either they will prompt you to make a partition if there is not, and then you can choose, which drive you'd like to install windows on.

 

[refractoryman]

I'm installing Vista Home premium. Is there any advantage to partitioning the "C" drive? If so what? (1) partition for the OS and the other for App's?