Hi everyone,

I've got multiple dilemmas about to occur. And the cause is my brand new computer. I'll need some help and advice from the linux community !

The core specs of my new computer is an Intel core i7 920 with 6 Gig of Tripple channel Ram with 2 identical 320Gig HD.

Let's be serious here. I'm a Windows user not by choice, I'm forced to by the tools of my trade. Being a .NET software consultant, most of my contracts requires me to work with their set of tools, IDE, source code control, etc...but i'd love to use Linux as much as i can. I used to play around with Linux 5-7 years ago, but i then decided stay 100% windows, mostly because of my work and the lack of support for games at the time.

I recently re-installed Linux on my old home PC. And i've noticed that i can probably do 50% of my computer tasks on Linux. Which is much more that i could 5 years ago.

That said, i decided to have both Windows and Linux installed on my PC. Which is something i've done before, but I'd also like to have a RAID 1 on my PC. So i started looking around and i couldn't find any decent instructions that demonstrate how to setup a dual boot windows/Linux system using motherboard raid controllers. So i'm running low on options.

That leaves me with the following choices:

1. Find comprehensive and functionnal instructions on how to build a dual boot Win/Lin using my motherboards raid controllers
2. Install Linux as primary OS and run Windows through VMWare
3. Install Windows as primary OS and run Linux through VMWare
4. Get 2 more HD, do 2 raids and install 1 OS on each set of RAIDS

Let's start with option 4, that's not a very good option. First of all 4 HD are a lot more noisy. Plus i probably wont be able to see my drives from one RAID to the other (from what i've read, Windows raid and Linux raid are very different)

Option 2 and 3 are more likely the best bet. But i'm wondering if i'll see peformance issues or compatibility issues when trying to install drivers & applications on the selected virtual environment

Has anyone any comments or suggestions? Right now i'm leaning towards option 2.

cheers