D975XBX2 - Installing RAID

Annatjie · Post by **Annatjie** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:30 am

Hello

I have four HDD's in my system - two 150GB WD Raptors and two 500GB WD Caviars. I successfully created a RAID 0 volume (Intel Matrix Controller) consisting of the two Raptors. When I proceeded to install Windows XP it correctly detected my the "three" drives on my system. I then partioned each drive, ensuring that the RAID 0 volume is detected as C:\ and the two Caviars as D:\ and E:\ respectively. I then selected to install Windows on drive C:\. However, Windows prompted me that it needs to format drive D:\ as it requires certain installation files to be copied there. Afterwards it formatted drive C:\.

The problem is that in Windows drive C:\ is listed as 'Boot' drive and drive D:\ as 'System' drive. I want to use drive D:\ for backups and will lose all my information if I have to format drive C:\ in the future as Windows automatically also formats drive D:\.

Did I do something wrong? Is there a workaround?

Thanks

Post by **Apoptosis** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:41 am

I usually do RAID on the primary array and then after windows installs, I add the other pair of drives and set them up. I've honestly never tried doing four fresh drives and a windows install at once.

Annatjie · Post by **Annatjie** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 8:45 am

Apoptosis wrote:I usually do RAID on the primary array and then after windows installs, I add the other pair of drives and set them up. I've honestly never tried doing four fresh drives and a windows install at once.

If I understand correctly when I setup Windows I must remove the partitions on all three HDD's, and then only create a new partition on the RAID volume, leaving the remaining two WD drives unrecognised by Windows setup. And then once Windows has installed, I should use the Storage Manager to partition and format said two drives. Correct?