Hello,

I just have a couple questions that I am hoping someone can help with. After 6 years years of great experience with my previous PC build, it finally began to succumb to it's age, so I decided it was time to splurge a bit and get what I neded and build another complete, more up-to-date PC (basic specs should appear someplace if profile shows correctly). This time around I am working with a couple new things, most notable RAID and a different OS- Win XP. I got everything assembled a little over a week ago, and have spent the last week, while also spending the last couple weeks searching and reading to find and learn everything I didn't know before, since I like to know as much as I can in advance. I'm now finally ready to go and do my RAID setup, XP install, Etc., not that I found everything I wnated and either have it memorized or readily available on my backup PC....

However, there was one thing I could not find it specificly stated thru everything I looked up, so I am hoping someone here would be kind enough to help with...

- During XP's Setup and Install (after RAID is enabeled in BIOS, and RAID 0 is setup via the MB's onboard utility, (of course) will XP do the Partioning and Format for BOTH Hard Drives (brand new + bare), or just the XP Boot Drive (C: drive)?

I saw many places where it said that it does this during setup for the drive the OS will go on, I just didn't see it stated specificly anyplace wether or not if, during setup, it will also do the partition/format for any other seperate, additional drives, (a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, Etc.) too, if such drives were present and had not been done yet.

-Also, while I am here, I am just curious if anyone would know what the approx. size of a Full Backup file would be, with the back-up taking place right after XP w/SP2, Full driver updates/installsand, and all available MS updates completed? (I'm just looking to see if anyone knows off-hand what the Approximate size would be, it's not necessary to be 100% exact....).

If you have 2 100 gig drives in RAID 0 for example, when you start to install XP it will detect that you have 1 drive with 200 meg available, if you have the RAID array set as your boot drive in the BIOS, then Windows will see it as Volume C.
Make sure you have the Windows RAID drivers for your controller copied to a floppy disk, when the Windows install starts and says "Press F6 to install a third party device driver" you have to hit F6 and then Windows will search the Floppy, display the contents of the floppy and allow you to select the RAID driver. Select it in the menu, and then Windows will install the driver and continue. If you don't do this correctly, Windows will tell you that it cannot find a bootable drive to install on.

You will have the option to format the drive anyway you like, just like normal. Remember, hardware RAID is controlled by the hardware on the board. Window's itself has no idea that it's using 2 striped drives. The controller displays to Windows, and Windows simply sees 1 big drive. (if you installed the driver correctly when prompted)

After Windows is installed, then you can format and set active any other drives you may want to add to the system as "d", "e", "f" or whatever. Just go into Control Panel, Adminstrative Tools, Computer Management, then finally Disk Management, and do it all from there.

I am not sure about the backup, but I would think less than 200 meg or so. But I am just assuming here, sorry.

Ahh, ok, that seems to make sense. Everything else about it I was able to find what I needed, by way of guides, manuals, forums, and so on, which allowed me to get and have everything else ready, as a result (Updated drivers, RAID's <F6> Driver Floppy made and ready, Etc.). Just no matter where I looked, nothing had really explicitly stated how Setup handled extra bare drives within a RAID array, other than the "install" drive. And being that it's to be a RAID setup, as opposed to simple, seperate drives, I figured it'd be a good idea to make sure in advance....

As for the backup size, it'd be really nice if it were indeed around that size. If not, that's ok too, either way one will have to be made no matter what.

Thank you very much for your answers!
I greatly appreciate your taking the time to provide that bit of info. so soon