I just finished building my first box, with 74GB 10,000 RPM Raptor & 160GB 7,200 RPM SATA HD's. I know to put FSX on the Raptor, and assume Windows XP should go on the 7200 RPM disk. I was in the process of installing XP, and a couple things made me stop for the moment ... 1. It asked me if I wanted to partition the 160GB disk and install XP on the partition. 2. XP indicated, even after I selected the 160GB HD, that it didn't see some Windows components on the Raptor. I stopped there -- just wanting to make sure I have a good grasp on whether Windows needs to lay something down on the Raptor in order to make XP run on the 160GB disk, and if so, what I need to know about it to make sure I don't hose up the install. I realize some of this might require some substantial reading up on HD partitioning, so if anyone can respond back to my comments above, and maybe point me to a good, comprehensive resource for any questions I should be asking, or other things I should be contemplating, it would be greatly appreciated!!!

So long as your 160 SATA drive is considered the "primary and active" drive, you should be OK.If your Raptor is the "Primary and active" partition, Windows will place the boot sectors down on it, even though it points back to the 160GB for all the system files. This isn't a performance issue, but for logical reasons, you don't want to do it! In the event you lose the Raptor drive, or want to fully format it, you could cause problems with your system drive. Make sure you have a primary partition on the 160, and make sure it is the "active" partition for booting. -Greg

I believe windows needs a primary partition set as the system partition. This is the partition which will receive control after the BIOS does its post etc so the BIOS must be able to find it. Windows must put its boot loader (ntldr) into this partition. It also puts the file boot.ini which tells the loader where the actual OS is and how to boot it. Boot.ini provides the mechanism for multi-boot. Note that Vista uses a different boot loader than XP (bootmgr), so if you want both you have to first install xp, and then when you install vista it will replace the boot loader with its own, and patch up things so if xp is selected for boot, it will pass control to the xp boot loader.Edit: I should add that my personal preference is to install my primary OS into the system partition. I size the partition so that it will contain the OS only (you need to allow room for some app local files or caches since some bad - apps won't allow you to place these in preferred locations). I think 10 - 15 Gb for Win XP is sufficient. Any remaining space on that drive hardware I assign to the extended partition.scott s..

>I just finished building my first box, with 74GB 10,000 RPM>Raptor & 160GB 7,200 RPM SATA HD's. I know to put FSX on the>Raptor, and assume Windows XP should go on the 7200 RPM disk. >I was in the process of installing XP, and a couple things>made me stop for the moment ... 1. It asked me if I wanted to>partition the 160GB disk and install XP on the partition. 2. >XP indicated, even after I selected the 160GB HD, that it>didn't see some Windows components on the Raptor. I stopped>there -- just wanting to make sure I have a good grasp on>whether Windows needs to lay something down on the Raptor in>order to make XP run on the 160GB disk, and if so, what I need>to know about it to make sure I don't hose up the install. >>I realize some of this might require some substantial reading>up on HD partitioning, so if anyone can respond back to my>comments above, and maybe point me to a good, comprehensive>resource for any questions I should be asking, or other things>I should be contemplating, it would be greatly appreciated!!!>If you can afford it get another 74 gig Raptor and set em up RAID-0I have been using the Raptor RAID-0 setup since those drives were released and have had 0 problems. Disk reads are wicked fast!Widows etc come up instantly.I used the onboard Promise RAID controller on the old machine and the NVIDIA controller on the AMD Quad, no issues.