How to go about installing Raid 0

[messiah34]

I have windows 7 currently installed on my computer on one hard drive and was wondering how I would go about installing raid 0. I have the same Hard drive that has the OS on it and installed it and the motherboard detects it I just need to delete the OS and set up Raid 0? My system specs are listed below. Some things I'm not sure about
1.-How to delete windows 7. I already have system image saved along with a restore disc.
2. What is needed to install raid 0 on windows 7 besides two identical hard drives which I have. I have read you need a floppy drive? Or would a usb drive work?
2. How to go about installing Raid 0?



Cpu-AMD PHENOM II X6 1075T 3.0GHZ
Hard drive - 2x 640GB SATA III 6GB/S 7200RPM 64MB CACHE 3.5" HD
Ram- 12GB DDR3 / 1600 MHZ MEMORY
ASETEK 510LC 120MM WATERCOOLER
Optical Drive-BLACK LITE-ON 24X DVDRW
Motherboard-GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 2 WAYS AM3 870 DDR3 USB3 SATA3 AMD
Graphics card-GTX 570
OPERATING SYSTEM Windows 7
CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX POWER SUPPLY

[glc]

1. No need, when you use the bios to create the RAID array the drive will be wiped.
2. If a RAID driver is needed, Windows 7 allows you to install it from a USB flash drive.
3. It's all done in the bios.

Now, before you do RAID 0, you need to understand that it is not particularly reliable. When it works, you do get a speed increase. However, if you have any problems with either drive, you lose the whole array. Keeping backups is essential.

[messiah34]

Thanks for the quick response. I'll give it a try.

[messiah34]

So I installed the Raid 0 array and it detected both drivers for 1.2TB in the bios and at boot. I loaded the drivers before reinstalling my Windows Image Restore and it reinstalled windows. However, it is only detecting 640 GB when I go to my computer. I was wondering if I have to do a complete clean install of windows instead of using my Image Restore. I was thinking the Image Restore formatted my disk to its format of what it was when the image was taken. Unless I just need to do something simple to have it detect the Raid 0 in Windows itself. I was under the impression that Raid 0 used the drivers as one large drive? It also doesn't detect two drives just one.

[glc]

What does Disk Management indicate?

[messiah34]

It says that one disk is unallocated. Not sure what this means. Thanks for the quick responses.

[glc]

It means that you didn't do something right creating the array.

[messiah34]

Alright well I will try to reinstall it.

[messiah34]

I had to reinstall a clean version of windows and it worked fine. I guess for some reason the system image I was trying to load would cause it to only recognize the one drive. Thanks for the help!