3rd Party RAID card... not for the OS

[morrima]

I'm installing Win7 64 on a single system drive but I plan to add a 3rd party RAID controller and drives for data storage. Do I need to hook up the card and storage drives and install the drivers on the initial install of Windows or can I simply install the OS on the main system drive and add the RAID at a later point?

 

[pinaplex]

if you're boot drive is not running off of the raid card, then everything can be added at a later time. if you are attaching the boot drive to the raid card then you should have a driver disk at initial boot up (if windows 7 doesn't pick up the card). Either way, you should be able to add the RAID array at a later time.

 

[The_Prophecy]

+1. If the hard drive you are booting from is not going to be involved in the RAID array, you don't have to set it up before or during the install of Windows.