Hi all,
Back from a long trip in Europe and now attempting my latest software aided journey - exploring different O/S for Pix Insight image processing.
So an interesting challenge I have comming up. I want to try dual booting my system across WIndows 10 Pro and Windows 11 Pro operatings systems - and may eventually add a third O/S on a thrid SSD - likely Ubuntu (Linux).
I intend to set each O/S up on its own specific SATA SSD - so imagine 3 SSDs each with its own O/S.
I need to share one or in future two large HDDs across each O/S (both formated in NTFS) - this should be simple.
The challenge is I have a scratch file drive that will be heavily used - it is currently a Windows 10 Pro created dynamic disk on a PCIE x16 card comprising of four seperate 2TB NVMe M2 Crucial drives - created by the Windows 1-0 Pro O/S as a dynamic RAID 0 array.
Now my challenge is this RAID 0 array was created by the Windows 10 Pro O/S instance - not in the BIOS by the HP Z640 workstations motherboard - this maybe something it can do - but I haven't gone down this path yet - seeing if the HP Z640 can create a RAID array on a PCIE x16 card - thus possibly making it visibile to any O/S I choose to launch.
When I try and dual boot Windows 11 Pro next - I am wondering 1) where I should put the boot loader - on the intial C: drive that holds Windows 10 Pro - letting it see the first original SSD as the Windows 10 Pro drive and making the new second drive a Windows 11 Pro drive (that when it launches it will likely assign letter c: to that second drive and 2) will the RAID 0 array (my R: drive in WIndows 10 Pro) be usable to Windows 11 Pro - or will it just see 4 un-initialised disks - becuase it didn't create the dynamic drive?
Then later I will create a Ubuntu drive - so I face the problems - where do I store and what boot loader do I choose to launch 3 O/S and will the Ubuntu O/S be able to see a WIndows created RAID 0 array.
My fear is if one O/S creates a RAID array - the other O/S may not be able to understand it - forcing hem to nuke it and recreate it from scratch every time they are launched and I read somewhere when a HP Z640 BIOS tries to create a RAID array it sometimes forces all drives attached to try and become RAID arrays - so I have to look into that more.
The last (as if they aren't enough) challenge I will face is how a dual Xeon workstation launches an O/S - you don't generally see anything for 60 seconds until the Windows boot screen appears - so how or even will I see a multi boot loader to choose which O/S I desire? Unlike a normal PC - where the BIOS power on is quick and rather visible - a dual CPU workstation boot seems to be hidden until the OS splash screen appears.
I am off on a learning curve - any help that can be given will be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks,
Matthew
PS
If it all becomes too hard - I realise I can simply delete my 4 x 2TB RAID 0 array (R
and create 4 x 2TB simple drives (R: S: T: U
and tell my software (PixInsight) that requires fast I/0 to use 4 specific drives (with multiple shares for i/o speed) for holding astro images and the scratch files required to process them in large batches (stacking of 1,000s of images).