Dual Booting RAID 1

[CHoffman]

Hi All,

I have RAID 1 array (Intel 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller) using two matched 500GB Hitachi SATA drives and would like to dual boot Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 Professional. Windows XP is currently installed. I have two questions for the community.

1. Do I have to break the array to partition the disks?

2. What procedure should I follow when installing Windows 7 Professional in order to dual boot?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

Regards,
Chuck

 

[marcellis22]

Hey Chuck,
You need to clean up the RAID1 array you have, delete temp files and such, defrag the array, and partition it to accept the WIN7 install, if you know how to do that. What I have done is leave my XP RAID1 alone and installed WIN7 on a third drive, using the BIOS boot options to boot to one drive set or the other. You should really be using a stand alone RAID card, that way you can move the RAID array to ANY motherboard you need to. I can give you more info, email me at marcellis22@msn.com

 

[CHoffman]

Marcellis,

Thanks for your reply. I'll check my case to see if I've got the space for a third drive. I have to admit, your suggestion to install Windows 7 on a completely separate drive makes perfect sense and would certainly simplify things.

For future reference, I am still curious about my first question, though. Do you know whether or not a RAID 1 array be resized without breaking the array first?

Regards,
Chuck

 

[vibe]

Re-sizing a RAID array may be a function of some RAID controllers but not all, I personally would not recommend it. Unless data can be recovered without too much fuss.

 

[CHoffman]

Vibe,

Thanks for your recommendation. What I was wondering about were the implications of using a partition manager utility to resize a RAID 1 array, e.g., GPartEd or EASEUS Partition Master). Needless to say, I would never attempt anything of the sort withou a good backup.

Regards,
Chuck