CWell1337

Hey guys,

Tomorrow I am heavily upgrading my computer. What I want to do is 2 clean installs, one of XP 32-bit and one of Vista 64-bit. I will have two RaptorXs in RAID 0 that I will want to install to. My series of questions are as follows:

1. How large should I make the partitions?
2. Should I install XP or Vista first?
3. Should I use some kind of 3rd party Boot Manager?
4. Should I create the partitions before I try and install either OS? If so how would I do this while trying to create a RAID array?
5. I know how to load RAID drivers in XP, how is this done for Vista?

Let's say I want to install Crysis in both OSs, I imagine I would have to install it once to each partition containing each operating system to work properly.

I have over 1TB of storage space on other drives so I don't need to leave room for storage or anything. Basically I just need the partitions on the RAID to be large enough for their respective installs of Windows and for programs to be installed with them.

Or much more simple, does anyone know of a good guide on setting up 2 new installs of XP and Vista in a RAID?

Thanks in advance guys,

C

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brown bird

The only question that I can answer is that you must install XP before Vista to avoid any problems. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

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murcielago585

I have this exact setup, i only keep XP for my engineering programs such as catia. If Vista is going to be your main os, its an obvious choice to give it a lot more room. I ahve two 250gb hard drives in raid 0 and I followed the instructions that came with my motherboard to install raid drivers.

You will want to install xp first and when that blue screen comes up at the bottom there will be text that same something like "press F5 if you need to load third party raid drivers" so just press it and let xp load the rest of the drivers. when it is done doing that it will ask you for the drivers so insert the floppy or cd with the raid driver for your motherboard and follow the instructions. When you are done that, make a partition for xp,since you ahve so much space, i would give xp like 80-100gb.

once you are done installing xp, you can now do vista. just stick in the disc and follow the steps, it'll ask you if you have drivers for the raid configuration, so jsut follow the steps for that using the motherboard disc again. Install it like you normally would. Now when you boot up your computer it'll give you the option to either boot into vista or older operating system, that screen is the same one you get when you startup the computer with F8, it;ll hold for 30 seconds, after that it'll boot into vista.

If you have anymore questions reguarding what to do just pm me. its an easy process and they work well together.

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billbartuska

What an excellent post! No one ever mentions the Vista boot loader's option for calling XP's boot loader either. And I just cringe every time I read a post about people disconnecting their XP drives ("to protect the XP install"...HA!) before they install Vista.

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CWell1337

I already installed XP and now I need to resize the partition (yes I know I should have made it smaller when I installed XP but thats water under the bridge now). I have XP installed onto a RAID 0 array.

My question is, is it ok to use Partition Magic to resize a RAID 0 array with your OS currently on it?

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murcielago585

i think i;ve used it before to resize my os partition, i don;t knwo how safe it is though, partition magic is pretty good though, it should do the job. If i were you i'd just re-install xp, its only an hour max to do.

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HatesFury

1) you can absolutely resize with OS installed using partition magic. Slight chance of failure, but really slight.

2) as already said XP first, then Vista

3) i'd reccomend 20gigs, 20 gigs, Rest. Leaving the rest of the drive as a "dump" should help keep the partitions with OSs on the less cluttered.

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CWell1337

Yeah I went ahead and did it right after I posted. No problems at all. Running Vista x64 alongside XP Pro x86. Thanks for the help guys!

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