I have a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P (rev. 2.1) MOBO in a 6-year-old built to order machine that I'm upgrading from XP/Pro to Win7/Pro.
It has these specs. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4 GHz) Quad Core. The MOBO includes SATAII. It has the Intel P35 chipset in the North Bridge (2 GSATA ports) and Intel ICH9R in the South Bridge (6 SATAII ports. It has 8 GB of DDRII 800 memory.
My current configuration has XP and my program files on two 74 GB WD Raptor drives in RAID1 and two 500 GB WD Caviar Caviar SE16 drives also in RAID1.
The CMOS setting for SATA RAID/AHCI Mode is RAID. (Aside: Damn it would be useful to have a log file of all my current CMOS settings. I don't do this every day, and shutting down just so I can reboot and enter settings to check a setting and maybe document it with a digital photo is a PITA. Has anyone ever figured out how to gather this information into a log?)
I want to replace the Raptor drives with two 128 GB Crucial M550 SSD drives and install Win7 64bit in RAID1. I will keep my data drives in RAID1 during the process.
What I've read suggests that the order in which I do things could make my new installation relatively pain free or very complex.
I know that the RAID1 software I am using is here:
C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology
It was installed by the custom builder (GamePC/SolidElectric of Palo Alto, CA.) I don't find a CD for the software.
Will I need to download software from Intel that is Win7 64bit compatible? Will my 74-year-old brain be able to readily understand the options I might encounter during installation?
It is clear to me that I will also need a 64 bit driver. Which should I download?
Should all of this be available on a flash drive?
My current drive C: will be unavailable during the Windows installation process so I won't have access to the program I've been using. I doubt it would run under Win7 64bit anyway.
I would very much appreciate a straightforward explanation of the steps I should take to accomplish my goal. I’ve been very happy with the service that Rapid Storage Technology has given me.
I've asked for help on other forums and encountered replies like these. "Why would you want to do that?" "RAID1 is not a backup solution." They are not much help to me.
Thanks,
baumgrenze