I bought a refurbished XPS 400 system about a year ago, and did not realize I had to select the RAID controller options when I purchased it. As a result it came as a stripped raid....I believe raid 0.......but now I’m not sure if I can do what I totally want.

I want to be able to turn off the Raid config....and run 2 independent Drives...i.e..a C & D drive....I’m not worried about stripping or mirroring or backing up. I went into BIOS and selected "Combination Mode".....it gave me the warnings about loss of data.....I had already backed everything up.....had to reload XP...format drives...ect, ect. When all was said and done XP loaded up fine and both drives were independent......with one problem. In Combination Mode the controller no longer recognizes all 4 of the SATA ports.

I had recently purchased a external ESATA drive and the hardware plate and cables to jump to the Motherboard ......after all my jacking around…switching to Combo Mode…reloading XP…. ect…when I plugged in my external ESATA Drive…….XP didn’t see it…….went to My Computer….Manage…….Disk Management……but it wasn’t there……the External is formatted and has info on it……it’s the Drive I used to back up all my info on ….from the original Stripped Raid Drives…so I know it’s good.

So am I doomed to run Raid if I want to use the External……or is there a way (possibly new drivers?) to turn off Raid and run SATA and get the Controller to recognize all 4 SATA ports ??????

Any help or info will be greatly appreciated……..Ron

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