HowTo [Short] 3TB Raid on Win7 64bit

Hello everyone!

Short introduction of me:
I am a casual user of Windows. No overclocker or any other type of "special user". Since i could not find any guides for "users like me" i decided to create this guide to help people set up a RAID on a Intel Z77 platform. The Mobo is a G1 Sniper M3.

First time playing with RAID in general. With 2 3TB disks from WD (WD30EURS). Including complete reinstall of Win7 64bit. Issue with Intel Rapid Storage Technology – and solution for Newbies to RAID – Like Me.

Steps I took to set up the RAID:

- Changed SATA mode to RAID in bios
- Ctrl-I to access the raid prompt
- created Raid volume
- named it RaidStorage
- set to Raid1 (mirror)
- selected my two 3TB HDD WD30EURS (not formatted – delivery condition)
- exited and restarted computer and started from Win 7 DVD
- When on the screen with select drive to install Win 7 on, two about 750GB capacity drives where shown and the SSD for the OS. But no 2.7TB (Raid) volume. (Searching for a guide – could not find any good ones, watched Youtube vids – could not find a good one.)* Thought it could only be a driver problem since the RAID setup detects the true capacity only Win7 would not. Then the following sites made me find the breakthrough:




SOLUTION:
You need to download the “Intel® Rapid Storage Technology F6 Driver Diskettes” [LINK: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&...] to a USB drive and there you need to extract it. On the Win7 screen where you see your two “RAID” drives as separate volumes with about 750GB of capacity you need to click on load driver and select the extracted driver utility from Intel on the USB drive (where you extracted it before). Once loaded the two 750GB drives will turn to one 2.7TB harddrive which is the RAID volume you created before.

- Finish the Win7 install.
- Congrats! You are done.

Additional Information about the WD30EURS:

The harddrive supports IntelliPark but does not have the wdidle3 timer enabled. I checked it with the wdidle3 tool and found the timer to be disabled.
*So I thought of creating this “short guide which is hopefully helpful!”