How to disable Raid

suj01

If you have RAID-0, then the only way to disable it and have two separate hard drives, is to reinstall windows from the Dell reinstallation discs.

Bev.





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Message Edited by mombodog on 09-29-2007 07:39 PM

Hi. I have a Dimension 9200 running Vista (32 bit) with 2 x 500GB HDDś in Raid0.

I followed your instructions to disable Raid but I got a message saying that if I chose to change the drives'status to non-member, thus removing Raid structures, I would lose all data on both drives.

Is there a way of disabling Raid 0 without losing the data and having to reinstall everything?

Correction: I have Raid 1 (mirror). Sorry.

Thank you. Pls bear with me, I´m dead scared of breaking my system.

It is truly a Raid 1 mirror.

When I hit ctrl i to access the Intel Matrix Storage manager, the options available are:
1: Create RAID Volume
2: Delete RAID Volume
3: Reset disks to Non-RAID

When I select "Reset disks to Non-RAID" it allows me to select the disk(s) to be reset but a big red warning reads: "Resetting a disk causes all data on the disk to be lost".

I haven´t found where to change a disk´s status to Non Member as you indicate.

Should I proceed to "Reset" both disks and reboot without data/apps loss?

Correction to garbled paragraph:

I rebooted, accessed the Intel RAID Option ROM utility with ctrl i, selected Reset disks to Non-RAID , reset both drives by successively selecting them and marking them for resetting with the space bar, confirmed the action, exited the ROM utility and left the system to finish booting on its own.

Thank you.

I´ve eventually done it and it has worked without any problems or hassle.

For the benefit of others, here is what I did, basically on Mombodog´s valuable advise:

I tried to delete the volume as indicated on P43 of the user manual, using the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, but the action was denied with , or something to that effect.

Browsing through Intel´s Support web, I found this :

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022836.htm

I rebooted, accessed the Intel RAID Option ROM utility with , selected , reset both drives by successively selecting them and marking them for resetting with the space bar, confirmed the action, exited the ROM utility and left the system to finish booting on its own.

It took a while longer than usual, Vista reinstalled a couple of drivers (DVD drives)for some unknown reason and Windows Explorer showed the two drives with their own device letters, ready to use as separate volumes.

Just an ending note on why I wanted to break the Raid 1 array. It´s given me problems from the start, from initial system freezes partially solved with BIOS, firmware and driver upgrades, to recurring messages on booting, indicating that the system had shut down abnormally which required repairing the array (an automatic process launched by the Intel Matrix Storage Manager). It took a couple of hours to complete, with almost total system blockage. The system is no slouch, with 3GB memory and a Dual Core 6700 processor. And, frankly, having to wait two hours to use the system on a recurring basis became unacceptable.

I associate the abnormal shutdowns (which I only discovered when rebooting, as all shutdowns seemed absolutely normal) with the poor quality of Vista and my need to install applications which are often not Vista-written or Vista-certified and end in failure. But who knows.

I had to go through this same process with a Dell XPS400 running Windows7 Ultimate.

I also had suspicions the RAID 1 was creating problems, and the RAID rebuild time was enormous.

I had  two Samsung 250GB disks, but the way Dell formatted them we only had 170GB mirror.  So we quickly ran out of disk space too.

I broke the RAID by removing both disks from the Member in the Array as described above.  But then Windows 7 would freeze and auto-reboot during startup.  Even the Startup Repair Wizard could not remedy the situation.  So I then went in and changed the RAID setting in the BIOS to Autoselect RAID / ATA versus AHCI.   Then I further had to disable the second disk in the BIOS.

After these changes, I could boot Windows 7 and it only saw the one active disk.  (The good news with this is the second disk was still a backup in case something went really wrong. )  Windows auto-discovered and installed ATA drivers.  After another reboot all was good.

Then I removed the second disk (the mirror), and replaced it with a 2TB Hitachi drive.  I re-enabled that SATA slot in the BIOS settings and booted Windows 7.  It found the new disk, installed the ATA drivers, and finally after one more reboot all is good.

So I now boot from the Samsung, and I have moved all my photos to the 2 TB Hitachi disk...plenty of space for now!

True, I don't have RAID, but between my own backups to an external drive and I am planning to activate SOS online Backup, I am confident that my data will be even more recoverable.

 

I have A OPTIPLEX 755 With two 1tb Hard drives. Does anyone have a way to disable Raid? I want two separate drives not redundant drives.

kfcsn5

Do you have RAID 1, or RAID 0?

See if the following can help:

 http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/disk-drives/f/3534/t/19527642.aspx

Bev.