Questions concerning a 1T Raid1 upgrade on a W700ds

[Geophyte1]

I'm planning to upgrade from a 500 gig Raid 1 to a 1T Raid 1 on my W700ds and want to make sure I've covered the bases.

From a quick perusal of the internet it appears that I can purchase the 1T 2.5" drives much cheaper than buying them from Lenovo.

Question 1: If I purchase WD 1T hard drives off the internet is there any "pre-formatting" that must occur for the drives to be like one that I would purchase from Lenovo? I suppose another way of asking the question is if there are any additional steps that must be performed with drives purchased from another vendor?

Question 2: Anyone know of any issues with using the 1T drives in a W700ds? I run Windows 7 64 bit in a Raid 1 configuration.

Question 3: Any suggestions as to which manufacturer's 1T hard drive to use?
thanks,

[precip9]

On a W500 or X61, the Lenovo supplied chipset support package does not work with WD 1TB Scorpio Blue drives, quickly corrupting the file system. It is probably a general problem with Advanced Format drives. A safe alternative for non-RAID use is infinst_autol.exe, downloadable from the Intel website:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... ldID=19596
Run it, and it will cause Microsoft to install a safe, working driver, instead of the defective Lenovo W7 package.

Perhaps a RAID solution is also available via Intel.