ok, so im planning an upgrade for the end of this month. nothing too flashy, new gfx card and some extra HDD's..
but im planning on putting the new HDDs in a RAID config, but after watching a vide on RAID by TekSyndicate ive decided it would be better to do a software RAID, now i know this is possible in windows. but ideally i want to do it during the windows installation. im fairly familiar with unattend files but i have no idea how to set up a raid config in an unattend file..
is it even possible??
if it is, what are (is)the command(s)?? (bearing in mind, this has to be done in an unattend file, because im moving the program files and pagefilesys to other drives, having litterally just windows on an old 64gb SSD)
I don't think you can install windows on a software RAID volume. I may be wrong about that but I'm pretty sure you'd have to use hardware (either RAID card or onboard) for that.
windows isnt going on the raid volume, but program files, program data, and user files are. its not hard to do but it does require the drive to already exist. ergo it has to be set up either before, or in the first stages of the setup.
Well since you can't stripe a mirrored drive you probably want raid 0.
Have you thought about software raid and then just using symbolic links for your mentioned folders? Any Windows will fit on a 64 Gig SSD. The driver and update stuff will be fine on the SSD. There are some cool GUI tools that allow you to link directories (I used them for moving games from the SSD to the HDD when I need space fast, works with uplay and other stuff as well). Pagefile.sys is a file, not a folder, that could be a problem with symlinking (or leave it on the SSD, if programs and User stuff is on another drive space should be fine).
Most motherboards support RAID 1,0 and 10 (sometimes 5 too).
yeah i can set it up through HW RAID easily enough, yeah i probably will just leave pagefile on the 64 ssd, definately moving the user n program stuff, the reason im doing this at the setup stage, is moving these folders after install can cause hiccups and problems. moving the user folders is easy enough, but things like temp folders, and user/program data after install always breaks the OS.
not sure what you mean by sym link, could you link me an article explaining it?
A symlink is a symbolic link that tells the operating system to access another path instead. Under Linux I could for example have a folder in my C:\ Drive that links to Folder on a D:\ Drive (or other drive). But Windows will treat it as if the folder was present on C:.
I've found that you can move pagefile.sys in Windows itself, have you tried that?
the whole 64gb, ive got another 256 ssd for games, atm ive got an OLD 250gb hdd so my games are on those, higher demanding games on the ssd, others on the hdd.
though im planning to swap out the 250gb 3.5" drive for 750GB 2.5" drives.
so the end setup would be,
64gb ssd - OS + Pagefile
256GB SSD - games only
2 x 750gb hdd(RAID) - other games, files, programs.
i know i can manually move most of that, but there will still be stuff lumbered onto the tiny 64gb ssd and it will slowly fill it up..
i know how to config a windows setup so that by default all the user folders + data aswell as program files + data moved to another drive, making it 100% off the OS drive. but what im not aware of is how the hell to setup a windows raid at setup. pretty sure diskpart cant do it, and im not aware of any other cmd line programs in windows that does.
ok, so after some research, ive discovered there is a cmd line program called DiskRAID, but it isnt listed for win7, but it is for Vista, server 2k + ....
anyone know if this is a stand alone program or does it have library dependencies??