Solved! Raid 0 - is it software or hardware based?

[SEigeard]

Hello,
I am planning on buying an Alienware m17x.
The harddrive config I am looking at is 2 500gig HDDs set to Raid 0.
My plan is to try to undo the Raid
and have one drive for games, and the other for my OS, program files and media, etc.
AWill I be able to wipe the drives, undo the raid in the bios, then use the "recovery" disk to put windows 7 on a single drive OR will the recovery disc reinitilize the raid?

 

[jamesyboy]

yea, you can turn off raid in the bios. be careful tho...dell doesnt normally include recovery media. It should literally be as easy as turning off a setting in the bios.

 

[chunkymonster]

If you break the RAID0 array, and that array had the OS installed on it from the factory, then you will lose the OS. The recovery disk typically does not reinstall the OS. Effectively what you will need to do is 1) make an image of the OS then break the array into single disks then re-image a single disk to be the OS and format the 2nd disk as storage, or 2) reinstall the OS onto a single disk after the array is broken.

In this case, unless you have a Windows7 install disk, then option #1 is what you want to do.