RAID questions

P

pcostanza

n00b
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
30
First, go easy because as far as hardware goes, I'm a newbie.
Built my first system, M232N SLI Deluxe which has 2 SATA HD's (320GB/500GB) and 2 SATA DVD drives.....no IDE at all.
I plan on installing XP on 1 drive and Vista Ultimate on the other but both will be partitioned.
So, the RAID question is, do I need to do anything upon XP install? I don't want to do anything different than any other systems I have (store bought) and usually bypass the F6 driver message during install. In fact I did the 'make a disk' thing and when I tried the F6 way, kept getting some corrupt file message.
So, do I really need to do anything with this at all if I just want to run a non RAID system?

See, told ya I was green!

Paul
 
If I'm unserstanding you right, you just want a dual boot config? Just install xp like normal and specify the size of the partition you want. Later use the disk management tool in admin tools or the diskpart command to create the other partition. Do the same for the vista install.

I'm a little lost on the f6 make a disk thing you referred to. You shouldn't need to press f6 since you aren't using raid.
 
I basically just want this system to work like any other system that doesn't even allow you to have a raid. 2 separate drives. No Raid-0 or stripped or whatever names they give it.
Thanks for the reply.
 
There should be a setting in your BIOS which enables/disables RAID. Usually by default its off, so just leave it that way and you will have what (i think) you want, just two separate disks.

Note that when you boot the system disk is drive C:. So, say you have XP on drive 0 and boot, drive 0 is C: (if you assigned it all to a single partition). When you boot Vista, drive 1 will be C: and that XP drive (0) will be D:.

In my RAID array (which is effectivly one drive), I made 3 partitions, one for XP, one for Vista and one for "stuff". I keep each OS partiotion as small as I can and put evrything elser in the third partition (E:). I have a fifth drive which is just used for archival (and safety).
 
You may need an XP disc with SP1 or 2 slipstreamed in for the installer to recognize your SATA HDDs.
 
I had an SP2 cd of XP Pro and tried nLite to slipstream updates plus drivers but the install kept crapping out so in the end, I just used the basic SP2 cd and it saw all my SATA drives, both hard and dvd.
Thanks for all helpful info guys. :)
 
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