Need Advice on New OS Istall w/ RAID 0

[afiess]

Hi, I am building a new computer for myself & just purchased your GA-X58A-UD7 Motherboard. I was reading through the manual and had a question on configuring RAID & need to know what would be the best recommendation in my situation. I purchased 2 1TB drives from Seagate and would like to configure them to Run RAID 0. I have a full version of Windows XP (32 bit) and upgrade media for Windows 7 (64 bit). I was planning on installing  XP (32 bit) on my pre-configured RAID 0 drive, then upgrading to Windows 7 (64 bit version). I noticed in Gigabyte's manual that I would have to install the RAID driver prior to installing the operating system on the RAID 0 configured drive, but am not sure if I installed the 32-bit RAID driver, then install XP, then upgrade to Win 7 64 bit, if the RAID would still work. What would be the best recommendation in my situation? Thanks in advance.

[Insurgent1980]

Normally RAID drivers have to be downloaded to a floppy disk for installation. My advice would be to prepare a Windows XP RAID diskette and a Windows 7 RAID diskette also. Install Windows XP and press F6 to bring up the driver menu then when you finish the installation of Windows XP proceed to upgrade to Windows 7. You won't need to press F6 on the Windows 7 installation as it will have a button "Load Drivers".

[UD6]

There is no upgrade from WinXP to any Windows 7 version!!!! Only XP -> Vista -> Win7. But what is left then...

But all Win 7 versions have all the drivers for RAID included - no need to install them during OS installation like in XP. You can make an update of the drivers afterwards when Win 7 64 is running already. Start with the chipset driver!!!

If you have a running XP without RAID then install the RAID drivers in XP - on your old disk. Next set up the RAID Areas. Then restore XP to the new RAID disks (with backup for instance). No problems at all. The backup does not care (not know) if it is RAID or not. Did the same with my 1 TB Seagates.

[littletiger1213]

hello, i installed win 7 64 on RAID 0 on UD7 as well.

you should connect both HD to the intel RAID controller (port 1 to 6). this is because when you get things done, you can simply disable Gigabyte RAID controller and Marvell controller in BIOS. You will see the boot speed increase dramatically. you will be surprised. But the intel RAID controller only support up to SATA 3G.

You can install win7 64 with a complete new hard disk. you don't need to do upgrade. you setup XHD in the chipset to enable Intel Raid 0 controller, then when you boot up, you should see the Intel RAID controller shows your hard disks ready with green letters.

you install win 7 64 following the instruction on the screen. DON'T INSTALL any drivers enclosed in the CD. There is no need. when you finish, DON'T type in your win 7 key. Just do it later. when you finish, you log in to win 7 and run REGEDIT and HKEY_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE
change MediaBootInstall value from 1 to 0 AND
RUN CMD as admin and type this command: slmgr /rearm and go

then you go to computer information then ACTIVE Windows. you type your win 7 key then you active it. The above command set your window 7 as if it were upgraded from previous version so that your upgrade key can be used to active your copy.