Operating System Installation (Cont’d)

When the screen on Figure 17 appears, press the S key and choose from the floppy the driver Windows should load (see Figure 18). In our case, we had to choose “Intel (R) 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller (Desktop ICH7R/DH)”, since our motherboard used ICH7R chip.

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Figure 18: Selecting the driver that should be used.

After selecting the driver, the previous screen (Figure 17) will appear again, now showing the driver that will be installed, see Figure 19.

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Figure 19: Windows showing the driver that will be used.

From now on Windows will recognize your RAID array correctly. In our example, since we configured a RAID0 system with two 80 GB hard disk drives, Windows is recognizing only one 160 GB hard disk drive, as you can see on Figure 20.

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Figure 20: Windows is recognizing our RAID0 system correctly as if it were one 160 GB drive.

Keep in mind that the numbers shown on our screenshots are a little bit lower, since hard disk drives are labeled using a “fake” capacity. For example, our 80 GB hard disk drives were actually 74.53 GB drives. That’s why you see 150 GB on Figure 20 and not 160 GB.

Now follow the normal Windows installation process, install all drivers of the hardware attached to your system, install the programs you use and that’s it.

Usually RAID controllers also come with management software that you can install to monitor your RAID system. This component is optional.

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