Best way to set up RAID 0 on a new build?

[dmooy]

Id like to set up raid 0 on my new build (MSI x99a Raider motherboard and two 500gig SSDs)  I'm wondering if I should do that somehow in Bios and then install windows (7 pro, 64 bit), or if I should install windows on one drive and then set it up afterwards?

[DaveLembke]

Its best to set it up first in hardware as a hardware controlled RAID as for when using Windows to set it up it then becomes a software simulated RAID which I would trust less. The software based RAID works most of the time, but there are also performance gains in using hardware based RAID with hardware that has built in RAID. This is why hardware based RAID is the best performance and reliability for servers. The only reason to go with using the OS for configuring a software based RAID would be if you have a system that doesnt have a RAID controller built into it.

[Calum]

I'll just add to the above that if you install Windows on the drive, you can't then use Windows to create a RAID 0 array using that drive (as far as I know).  So, you would need to set it up in the BIOS anyway unless these drives are not for the OS.  Two caveats - the Intel onboard RAID is not true hardware RAID, this isn't really an issue in most cases and as you're intending to use RAID 0, it won't matter much.  However secondly, what is your use case for wanting to use RAID 0?  RAIDing two SSDs will more than likely have no noticeable performance impact and you're doubling your chance of losing everything on the drives since if one fails, you can't recover the data from the other drive.  I can't think of any good reasons to go with RAID 0 for the OS drive, if these are for a secondary drive then I would still struggle to think of many good uses.
I don't mean to rain on your parade at all, just making sure you know what you're letting yourself in for in terms of possible failures and the lack of increased usable/noticeable performance in almost all cases.