Raid 0 set up

[bode5123]

I'm trying to set up a Raid 0 on two 74gb WD 10,000 rpm hard drives using Windows 7 home premium 64bit OS which is currently running on a WD 250gb HD. My system is: Intel dual2 E8500 CPU, 8gb Patriot Viper PC2-8500 ram,EP43-UD3L Gigabyte mobo, and a total of about 2.25 TB.

Here is my problem: I go to My Computer and right click, select Manage, Disk Management then find the two 74gb HD's and when I stripe them they automatically get converted to Dynamic disk. I move them in the bios to the 1st position or C and try to install Windows 7 to them but get a message that Win 7 can;t be installed on a dynamic disk??? Everything I have read makes it sound simple...

I'm disabled and on a fixed income and can't afford to hire a tech, can someone please help???? Also bare in mind that I'm a novice at this stuff so please speak in simple terms...
Thanks
Brad

 

[sminlal]

Just so you know - you're swimming in the deep end if you describe yourself as a novice and yet you're trying to use RAID. I hope you understand that you're more likely to loose all your data with RAID 0 so you need to have a good backup strategy.

Software RAID-0 can't be used for a boot drive because there's a chicken-and-egg situation - the drivers that understand how to read the data from the RAID set are on the RAID set and there's no way to get them loaded without having them loaded already.

 

[bode5123]

Thanks for getting back to me, I'm just trying to get the best performance I can out of what I have. So if I understand you right, no Raid 0 can be set up as the boot drive period?
Brad

 

[sminlal]

Not using the RAID options inside Windows.

You'd have to have a hardware RAID controller or use the motherboard-integrated RAID drivers if your motherboard's chipset supports them.

Motherboard-integrated RAID also does most of the work using Windows drivers, but the difference is that the chipset BIOS is smart enough to know how to get Windows and it's drivers loaded into memory.

 

[bode5123]

Thanks for responding... I guess what I'm trying to achieve is I want to have my OS and programs on the 2 74gb Raptors and then store all my videos, music, documents, etc. on the other hard drives, which I have over 2Tb's of storage. I have two identical WD 500gb and 1Tb Seagate and 1 WD 250gb.
Also I tried two different Raid cards with no luck either. Sounds like I need to get another mobo that supports Raid.
I really appreciate your input and please feel free make any suggestions that might help...
Brad

 

[bode5123]

Thanks for responding... I guess what I'm trying to achieve is I want to have my OS and programs on the 2 74gb Raptors and then store all my videos, music, documents, etc. on the other hard drives, which I have over 2Tb's of storage. I have two identical WD 500gb and 1Tb Seagate and 1 WD 250gb.
Also I tried two different Raid cards with no luck either. Sounds like I need to get another mobo that supports Raid.
I really appreciate your input and please feel free make any suggestions that might help...
Brad

 

[sminlal]

If you have a RAID card then it should work as long as there are Windows 7 drivers available for it. If the drivers aren't included in Windows itself then you'd have to load them during the Windows installation in order for Windows to see drives configured on the RAID controller.

To load the drivers during installation, click "Custom" when you get to the "Which type of installation do you want" screen. In the next screen there's a "Load Drivers" link. The drivers need to be on a CD (a USB drive might work as well although I've never tried it).

I recommend you have all other drives disconnected when you install Windows. If you don't, Windows will put a small "recovery partition" on one of the other drives if there's space and that will become the boot drive.

 

[bode5123]

Thanks again, I'll keep you posted....
Brad