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Dimension 9200 - Cannot see second hard drive in 'My Computer'
Hi All
My friends PC died on him and I have since recovered some of his data and today I reinstalled windows from dells neat recovery image program.
Problem I am having is that its not seeing the second hard drive in My Computer... even though it shows up in the BIOS and post screen and also Matrix Storage Manager...
It is set up to how it used to be with both drives being in the same array... I am not too clued up on sata drives, raids, and arrays so I am now seeking the help of someone that does...
I have tried updating the drivers and controllers but to no avail...
Both the hard drives are WDC WD2500JS-75NCB3
The pc is running windows vista 32.
Any other information you need just let me know and I look forward to hearing your advice soon...
Many thanks, Lee
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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May 11th, 2012 22:00
Please excuse the interruption, but nothing in Windows will show the individual drives in a RAID. You must be looking at the System Setup (BIOS) screen, the RAID Status screen, or the Matrix Storage Manager (Intel Rapid Storage in later versions) application to see the individual drives. So far as the OS is concerned you have only one drive if your computer is in RAID configuration.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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May 12th, 2012 12:00
Of course; you must delete the RAID and set up a single hard drive as your system drive. You can then add the second drive as a second stand-alone hard drive. Before you actually do this you must figure out which RAID you have. Your computer supports RAID 0 and RAID 1.
RAID 0 is often called a striped array. This configuration alternates writes to the drives to reduce the time spent waiting on the drives to be ready. Neither drive will have a complete copy of your data, so if you delete the RAID you also delete the data and can no longer access it. It is therefore important to back up your data to external media before you delete the array if you want to keep it.
RAID 1 is termed a mirror. Each drive has an exact copy of what has been written to the array so that the computer has a "hot backup" of the data. In this configuration if one of the drives fails, the computer continues to work from the good hard drive. If you delete a RAID 1 you still have your data since each hard drive is a duplicate of the other.
The Matrix Storage Manager and the RAID status screen have indications that explicitly tell which type of RAID you have, but you can also tell by the size of the RAID. If the OS reports a disk size twice that of the component drives you have RAID 0 as that configuration gives you the sum of the capacities of the two hard drives. If your OS reports a disk size equal to one of the two hard drives, you have a RAID 1 because that configuration duplicates the system drive to the second hard drive.
osprey4
4 Operator
4 Operator
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34.2K Posts
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May 11th, 2012 17:00
Hi Lee,
The system may be set up for RAID 0 or RAID 1, which would mean you would only see one drive in My Computer or Explorer. If you check disk management, you can see the physical drives.
randompunk
3 Posts
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May 12th, 2012 03:00
Is there a way of enabling the 2nd hard drive so I can see it in windows and use it as a functional storage device?
Thanks in advance,
Lee
randompunk
3 Posts
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May 12th, 2012 13:00
I am guessing that the system was set up like this previously before the system started playing up. So if I give it back to my friend as it is, it will just be like using it before it went wrong. I just assumed that having 2x 250GB sata raid hard drives would be the same/similar to having 2x 250GB IDE non raid hard drive.
If its just the case that the system is using raid 0 to reduce the waiting for drives to be ready or raid 1 for the other then I guess the system is all set up and ready to use again.
I am reluctant deleting the array as I don't want to delete Dell's recovery program that enables me to reinstall windows.
Many thanks for your help with my question, I appreciate it very much!
Cheers, Lee
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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May 12th, 2012 15:00
:emotion-22:
osprey4
4 Operator
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34.2K Posts
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May 12th, 2012 15:00
Thanks, Jackshack.
jackshack
6.4K Posts
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May 12th, 2012 15:00
We were happy to help. Best of luck to you.