Linux on Dell XPS M1730?

[zooid]

Hi there,

I've bought Dell XPS M1730, I know very little about linux, only basic commands, I've tried Slackware on my Desktop PC. And I always wanted to have a linux laptop. But after several times trying to install different versions of linux with no success. I've started googling that problem, then I've read articles saying that if hard drives are using RAID0, whatever that is (something like making 2 or more hard disks acting like one, as far as I understand), Linux cannot detect my drive(s) therefore, cannot install bootmanager, therefore cannot install linux.

What I am asking is, do I have to disable RAID0, split my hard drives, lose all the data to have linux installed on that laptop. Isn't there any way to prevent myself from spending hours and hours of backing up data?

Thanks in advance.

[lopez1364]

Not true. As for Raid configs.... RAID0 is no redundancy (or mirroring) its just striping across two drives so it doesn't act as one. What you should be looking at is if your PC has enough memory (512MB or more) to install newer distros. Unless you are trying to dual boot then thats a different story.

[zooid]

At the moment I use Dual boot Windows 7 64bit and Windows XP Pro 64bit. If the RAID0 is not the problem, then what should I do? When I insert the install linux DVD (eg. Slackware 13) it cannot detect my hard disk.

[zooid]

Here are the speciffications

Intel® Core Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.5 Ghz 2.5 GHz

RAM: 4 GB

Video: 2xNvidia GeForce 8700M GT 256 - SLI

HDD: 2x200GB array RAID0