This is a question that has been pulling my hair out since the beta and MS has not provided any reasons on why Windows 7 does not support software Raid-5. Can someone in Microsoft comment? I am currently being forced to run custom NAS with windows-7-WinPe. I have the Linux choice. Is that what MS want us to use? I could give it a try :-).

Hi Spoilsport,Windows 7 doesn’t support Raid 5.Only a hardware-based RAID installation is supported with Windows 7. You'll need to download the RAID drive controller drivers from your motherboard's support web site.If you have any feedback for windows 7 click on the link given below:http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/answersfeedback/threads/Thanks and Regards:Shalini Surana - Microsoft Support. Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

Sorry, I mis-spoke. I meant to say that Windows 7 does not, but that Winpe from the Windows 7 DVD does. I have a Sil3132 pcie card connected to a port multiplier sil3726. I have installed the SATA (not raid) driver for the card and I can see 5 unique drives. In windows 7, I can see that in DiskManager the raid 5 option is gray out. The diskpart utility does not let you create raid 5 volume with those five drives, eitherBUT, If you take the Windows 7 DVD and reboot the machine to the recovery console, a new animal appears :-). USing diskpart, you can create a RAID 5 volume with the five (5) drives, format the volume, copy data to it. Run DiskManager and see my single volume correctly. Everything that every Windows 7 User wants. Reboot back to windows 7 and VOILA (S**T), you can not access the volume any more. DiskManager sees it as an alien and whatever data you copied ten seconds agao is now inaccessible. But back with the DVD, fire up diskpart, tell it to re-enable the volume and...................... the data is magically there again. But wait, it gets better than that. Fire up ATTO benchmark, run it again you new SOFTWARE RAID 5 volume. 260megs WRITE performance; take that custom build NAS DIY box running Linux.The drivers are the same, infrastructure are the same. So what gives? WHY DOEN"T WINDOWS 7 SUPPORT SOFTWARE RAID?Does that mean that there is a binary edit hack just like in XP to enable software raid support? Inquiring minds want to know.Also, for those of us wanting to get a home NAS built with Windows 7 (not server 2008), is our only choice to move to Ubuntu? I am seriously considering.

spoilsport -- GREAT find. This is the kind of info we need to get this hack enabled in windows 7. Microsoft, seriously -- GFY.You charge over THREE HUNDRED dollars for a full version of Win7 x64 ultimate.I don't even have to say any more... Ubuntu is fricken FREE and it has software RAID5. You want us to use Windows Server for this one feature -- WHY!?Tons of games and other apps won't install on windows server (any version)...so by your logic we should have a seperate machine for our RAID storage and have that running Server and then share the volume and have another computer running Win 7....yeah, that's STUPID.Like spol said, Ubuntu is FREE and it has this feature.I guess it will be left up to the hacker community to enable something that should have been there from the start, ALONG with BOOT support for Software RAID0 (afaik boot volume works for RAID1 but not RAID0 with dynamic disks). Even OS X has that (omg!)...right in their installation DVD you can create a bootable software RAID1 or 0 volume and install the operating system to it. If XP can be hacked to support RAID5 than so can Windows 7 -- it's obvious it can support it easily given that you can create RAID5 volumes with the recovery console. If anyone has any further information on this or has found a hack, please let us know!

Ubuntu is fricken FREE and it has software RAID5. You want us to use Windows Server for this one feature -- WHY!? What even funnier is that is you are going to build a server with Windows Server, chances are you will be using a Hardware Raid solution anyway, so its a waste of a feature to limit it only to servers when the servers arn't using it.