

The 490 uses an Intel controller, and can provide RAID 0, 1, or 5 right from the motherboard. It turns out the RAID controller on the 490 is completely different from the one on the 470. Well, I've braved the Windows 7 waters alone with this Dell Precision 490. These systems can REALLY sing with Windows 7. Hope this helps anyone else trying to configure a "new old" workstation. And it's nice to see 1.46 TB free on drive C: with all my apps and everything installed. This system runs flawlessly and it would be hard to ask for more performance. I have an additional drive connected to SATA2 in a non-RAID setting, providing an additional 1 TB drive D. So I have a lightning fast Windows 7 圆4 Ultimate installation with 2 TB of drive C: space. Windows 7 Ultimate, right out of the box, recognized the onboard Intel Raid controller on the Precision 490 motherboard, and allowed me to format the array and install Windows on it. It then brought up the RAID control config screen that allowed me to create a RAID 0 volume. The key was configuring the BIOS in the 490 to force the consideration of the drives connected to SATA0 and SATA1 as a Raid array. Very slick - thank you Dell! I chose to go with RAID 0 as I prefer the extra speed and space, and have purchased top of the line Western Digital RE3 drives for maximum reliability.
