First time boot

[Jackpine]

Hi. I have just completed assembling the components for my first computer build, and have some questions about the process for booting it up the first time. I have three questions:
1. Should I have all the hard drives and optical drives connected (with data and power cables) and then boot up, or should they be installed one at a time, and letting the mobo recognize everything on a component by component basis?

2. Is there a list of things that need to be updated, like the bios, drivers, etc?
3. At what point(s) in the process should I be updating these things?


My system includes the following:

Asus P5LD2 Deluxe motherboard
P4 3.54 GHZ cpu
One WD 2500KS 250GB SATA2 boot drive
Two WD 2500KS 250GB SATA2 data drives (to be configured in RAID 0)
One DVD-RW
One CD-RW/DVD-ROM

I have read the mobo manual cover to cover a number of times, and always learn something new. However, it is essentially silent on what I need to know.

Thanks for any help.

[kram 2.0]

As for booting up, I would recommend getting one WD HDD, install it, then setup RAID with the other two. Outside of the RAID setup, bootup with everything - that is, unless you run into a problem.

kram

[rjfvillarosa]

As a rule of thumb I allways bootup the machine for the first time with the minimum amount of hardware installed just enough to get it running (CPU, One stick of RAM, One HDD, One Optical drive, Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers and Monitor (obviously video card if you are using one).
Then install Windows using the same configuration adding all the other components one at a time after Windows is fully installed.
Then you can install all the motherboard drivers and any specific drivers for a particular piece of hardware.
As regards the BIOS update "if it aint broke don't fix it" BIOS updates and firmware updates should only be carried out if you have an issue with a piece of hardware not working correctly, a small mistake flashing the BIOS or updating firmware can render that piece of hardware useless.
If you can get access to another machine download to a rewriteable disk AVG antivirus (free copy) and install that before going on the internet for the first time, also your first priority should be to go to Windows update and update your new copy of Windows with all the latest security patches.