[iiBOHICA]

I am attempting to do a "slow build", meaning: I am going to slowly upgrade components in my current machine, until everything is new. I have an HP Pavilion computer, and I want to change out the existing hard drive, with two new 1.5TB barracuda drives in raid 0 configuration. Changing the drives is not the problem, I also want to move to Windows 7, without transferring the information, including all of the HP peripherals, from the current hard drive. Do I need to do anything else, aside from swapping out the drives and installing the new operating system?

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Welcome to Geeks to Go!

Do you plan to have a ~3GB partion? If so, you may have to do a clean install of Win7 so that it uses the 100MB system partition. Also, you may want to do some homework, to see if your RAID controller is able to handle partitions that large. Not to mention you may see a performance hit instead of a performance advantage when using RAID on drives that large.

Edited by admin, 10 March 2010 - 05:26 PM.

[admin]

Welcome to Geeks to Go!

Do you plan to have a ~3GB partion? If so, you may have to do a clean install of Win7 so that it uses the 100MB system partition. Also, you may want to do some homework, to see if your RAID controller is able to handle partitions that large. Not to mention you may see a performance hit instead of a performance advantage when using RAID on drives that large.

Edited by admin, 10 March 2010 - 05:26 PM.

[iiBOHICA]

Welcome to Geeks to Go!

Do you plan to have a ~3GB partion? If so, you may have to do a clean install of Win7 so that it uses the 100MB system partition. Also, you may want to do some homework, to see if your RAID controller is able to handle partitions that large. Not to mention you may see a performance hit instead of a performance advantage when using RAID on drives that large.

Now we're entering foreign territory: what would the 3GB partition be for? The OS? I do video editing, and recently moved to doing HD video editing, which requires quite a bit more information, speed, and resources to do. I have been told by a few people who do the high end editing that it is best to configure 2-4 drives of 1TB in raid 0. I am essentially a novice here, so I am open to any advice, and want any knowledge you or others might have on this.

[admin]

I haven't kept real current on this, but RAID0 arrays were the common recommendation for highest throughput (like needed for video editing). However, modern high density drives in the 1-2TB range already have terrific throughput.

There are also some issues. 2TB is the limit for NTFS file system. However, there are some fairly easy workarounds, including a clean install of Win7 which loads a 100MB system file, and removes the 2TB limit through some tricks of its own. Still, your RAID controller may not recognize anything over 2TB. Also, RAID0 drives are twice as prone to failure. If one of the drives dies, you lose all the info on both drives. Finally, I'm sorry I don't remember where, but I recently read an article regarding RAID0 on TB+ drives. There seems to be a point of diminishing return when using very large drives due to stripe size and overhead. Bottom line, it seems there is very little benefit to RAID using 1TB+ drives. The throughout you get using a single 1.5TB drive may likely exceed the performance of someone using RAID0 on 2 or 3 500MB drives.

Edited by admin, 11 March 2010 - 11:29 AM.

[iiBOHICA]

I haven't kept real current on this, but RAID0 arrays were the common recommendation for highest throughput (like needed for video editing). However, modern high density drives in the 1-2TB range already have terrific throughput.

There are also some issues. 2TB is the limit for NTFS file system. However, there are some fairly easy workarounds, including a clean install of Win7 which loads a 100MB system file, and removes the 2TB limit through some tricks of its own. Still, your RAID controller may not recognize anything over 2TB. Also, RAID0 drives are twice as prone to failure. If one of the drives dies, you lose all the info on both drives. Finally, I'm sorry I don't remember where, but I recently read an article regarding RAID0 on TB+ drives. There seems to be a point of diminishing return when using very large drives due to stripe size and overhead. Bottom line, it seems there is very little benefit to RAID using 1TB+ drives. The throughout you get using a single 1.5TB drive may likely exceed the performance of someone using RAID0 on 2 or 3 500MB drives.

Alright, that makes sense. I suppose I can use the second drive as a media drive. Now, removing the current drive, and replacing it with a clean drive, with a clean install of windows 7, will I need to do anything to the bios to make everything work? Or can I simply install the drive and load 7 without a hitch, under normal circumstances?

[admin]

Should be no problems. Just boot from a DVD or thumbdrive and you'll be done in no time (15-20min).

[iiBOHICA]

Should be no problems. Just boot from a DVD or thumbdrive and you'll be done in no time (15-20min).

Awesome, thank you so much for your help!