X-25M RAID-0 as Primary disk - how to backup, secure erase and restore Win7?

[idata]

Hi

I have a pair of X-25M 80GB in a RAID-0 configuration running Windows7 64-bit with NTFS and due to the lack of TRIM support I'd like to backup the Win7 partition, secure erase the two SSD drives then restore the Win7 partition in order that the SSD drives are working efficiently.

The problem is that I have Win7 booting from the RAID-0 array which means the v2.0 Toolbox won't secure erase the drives, and since the Intel Toolbox is a Windows-only application I'm at a bit of a loss how best to secure erase the SSD drives outside of Windows. Ideally I need a DOS version of the Intel Toolbox...

Also, does anyone have any reccomendations for backing up and restoring the Windows 7 64-bit NTFS partition? Would the Linux "partimage" utility (booted from a LiveCD such as Linux System Recovery) be a viable option?

Many thanks in advance!

[idata]

Win 7 has a backup and restore option for create a system image (I've never tried it) but the thing you must make sure you backup is the system reserved 100MB partition if you don't have one then that makes backing up a bit easy.

So yes about secure erase you would have to either take the SSD's out and erase them in another computer or install windows on a HDD without activation for 30 days to erase them.