Windows XP installation on RAID

[alexprokop]

I've just set up a new RAID on my system. I've got a single disk for Windows and a pair in RAID 1 for my data. These are all setup ready to go. The XP disk is on SATA_0, the other two on SATA_1 and SATA_2 on the intel ICH10R controller on my motherboard. I've slipstreamed the Intel RAID driver onto my Windows XP disk and I'm ready to install.

So. When I get to the screen asking me to choose the HD to install onto I have the following options:

476938MB on Disk 0 at Id0 on Bus 0 on iastor
476930MB on Disk 0 at Id1 on Bus 0 on iastor

Conveniently as all three harddrives are the same size, it's not particularly easy to tell the difference!

Does the Id refer to anything useful or are they just the order that windows finds them in?

Would it be safe to assume that the RAID 1 pair is more likely to be the disk reported with a slightly smaller size?

Is it safe to remove the RAID 1 pair until I install windows or will this mess everything up?

Obviously I can just pick one and hope for the best, but it'd be good to only have to install it once

 

[rpstewart]

Is it safe to remove the RAID 1 pair until I install windows or will this mess everything up?

This is the sensible thing to do. If you only have a single drive connected when you do the install then you know for sure which drive everything is installed on. Windows will put the boot files on disk0 regardless of which drive you select for the actual /windows directory which can give you problems later.

As long as the SATA controller is set to RAID mode then the install will use the right drivers even if you don't have an array in place at the time.