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Best solution
Storage Expert
It's
better in general to connect only the primary OS drive
when you are installing Windows.
After Windows is fully installed, Plug-and-Play logic
makes it very easy to connect additional drives.
There is just one important decision which should
be made BEFORE running Windows Setup:
For motherboards with an integrated Intel chipset,
Intel recommends enabling RAID mode on your
main SATA ports, even if you opt for Just a Bunch
Of Disks aka JBOD
or non-RAID.
The reason for this is the way disks are initialized
when choosing "Standard IDE", "AHCI" or "RAID"
in your BIOS.
Switching device drivers from Standard IDE to AHCI
is possible, but switching from either to RAID
mode
requires a session with the integrated Option ROM
and re-installing Windows with RAID mode enabled
in the BIOS.
And, with XP the F6 option must be invoked
and the ICHxR driver "iastor.sys" etc. must
be ready
on a floppy disk. I don't know what has changed
with Windows 7 in this regard, but
the necessary
drivers must be installed during Windows Setup.
Summary: Intel recommends that RAID mode be
enabled in the BIOS before Windows Setup is
run the first time, even if all drives will operate
in non-RAID or JBOD mode initially. We agree
with this recommendation because it makes
adding RAID
array(s) much easier later on,
i.e. by eliminating the need to re-install the OS.
MRFS