RAID 10, Paertitions & Dynamic or Basic Disk Questions.

[woodbutcher]

Hey Guys and Gals, been awhile since I visited here. Hoping I can gather some info so I' less confused about the RAID build I'm working on.

First off, I know little about RAID although I've spent hours researching the different types of RAID and their advantages / disadvantages. Lets just say I know enough to be dangerous.

I set up a RAID 10 on a ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+ mobo with a Phenom II 920 quad core and installed Win 7 Pro 64bit. I used 2 WD 640GB black drives and 2 WD blue drives. I set up the 2 blacks as drive 0 (master) on channels 1 & 2 with the blues being drive 1 (slave) on channels 1 & 2. It looks like this in WDs diagnostic utility.

DRIVE DISK CHANNEL
WD64001 (Black) 0 xxxx000
WD64000 (Blue) 1 xxxx000
WD64001 (Black) 0 xxxx760
WD64000 (Blue) 1 xxxx760

Not exactly the way it looks, but you get the idea.

I then went into BIOS, changed the configuration to RAID, saved and rebooted. After the reboot I went into the RAID utility and under LD1 I initialized all 4 drives with RAID 10 and a 64kb stripe size setting the partition size at 120GB. I then went into LD2 and did the same, except it would not allow me to define the size, so it was set at the remaining capacity left, 1160 GB. I installed Win 7 with no problems and it runs, although in the "Windows Experience" tab the Hard Drive score was 6.3 out of 7.9, which seems a bit slow considering. I downloaded HD Tune and ran the test with default settings, I posted the results below.

When I looked at the setup in Disk Management, it shows Disk 0 as 100MB system reserve, with 111.9 as the primary partition. Not sure where the rest of the space went since I set the partition at 120GB. Anyhow, Disk 0 is a basic disk as setup by Win 7. Disk 1 is the second partition I made in the RAID utility with the remaining space, 1160GB. Win 7 asked if this disk (Disk 1) should be setup as MBR or GTP. I assumed MBR and set it as so. Should I set the second partition as a Basic or Dynamic Disk? This partition will be solely used for back-ups, recorded TV, etc. Also, when I right click on the unallocated space of this disk the only option provided is to set it up as a "Simple Volume", the rest being grayed out. Is this the way the second partition should be set? I always thought that a (Simple Volume) could only be done with 1 physical HD.

Sorry for the long post, I tend to be thorough with the details.
Thanks in advance.

WB