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How to disable Raid
Hi there
Have a Dimension 9200 (at present is under repair with Dell, but should have it back soon).
Its got two 160gb harddrives Im pretty sure it was set up with Raid (I think with Raid 0), however I have no need for Raid and would just like 2 seperate drives.
Does anybody have a simple (idiots) guide on how to disable Raid?
Thanks
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- You can break a Raid 1 (mirror) without reinstalling Windows, but not a raid 0 (stripe)To break a Raid 1Boot to the Intel RAID Option Rom Utility (ctrl + I ), break the Array (Change both drives to NON-Member disks) then reboot. The 2nd drive will be assigned new drive letter, and you can reformat it using disk management, and have additional space.
Message Edited by mombodog on 09-29-2007 07:39 PM - Thanks for your help guys..Looks like I will possibly be doing a reinstall.Last question, is there anything I would need to do to disable Raid, when I reinstall (maybe something in the bios?) or will it qive me a option during the reinstallation process?Thanks
- 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? - If it is truly a Raid 1 mirror,To break a Raid 1 without reinstallation of the OS
Boot to the Intel RAID Bios (ctrl + I ), break the Array (Change both drives to NON-Member disks) then reboot. The 2nd drive will be assigned new drive letter, and you can reformat it using disk management, and have additional space. - 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.

shesagordie
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Posted September 29th, 2007 21:00
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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