Hello all.
I just built a new machine:
Gigabyte ep45
2 SATA drives 640GB each

The drives are set up in the BIOS as a RAID1 (mirrored) array.
So there is effectively one drive with 596GB usable.
I installed XP on a 500GB partition, and left about 96G unpartitioned.

I would like to install Ubuntu 9.04 on the blank partition, and have the machine dual boot. (I have done this before on another machine with xp and rhel5, but no raid).

I am not planning on installing the ubuntu boot record on the windows partition. I am planning on setting up booting on the windows partition manually, editing the boot.ini and dumping (via dd) the ubuntu boot loading onto the windows partition.

I have been reading posts here about the difficulties with dual boot and raid, etc.

BEFORE I do this, I am looking for advice.

1) Will ubuntu install/recognize the hardware RAID1 array? What needs to be installed on ubuntu to make it work?

2) Advice about the dual boot?

I would appreciate any and all advice.
THANK YOU!

Probably. I'm assuming that your RAID hardware is on the motherboard and is probably so-called fakeraid or firmware raid. The program used to manage those is dmraid. From what I understand, the latest Ubuntu shouldn't require too much help to install, though you might need to use the "alternate" CD.

It is probably easier to let Ubuntu write on the boot record. But the dd/boot.ini system you propose works equally well. The problem will be to keep the Ubuntu installer from writing on the boot record; I can't remember if you get a choice. You might need to use the Windows CD to "rescue" your system after installing Ubuntu.