how to uninstall raid 1 on dimension 8400

Question

I would like to uninstall raid 1 and go with two drives. Anyone ever do it? Is there anything I should be aware of? Do I just disable it in the bios?

shesagordie · Answer

andrewe2

Boot the system, press CTRL+i when indicated to go into the RAID BIOS setup, and set the drives to a non-RAID configuration.

With RAID 1, you should have 2 hard drives that are exactly the same, after this, you can partition and format the second hard drive.

For RAID 0, you would loose all data on the two drives.

Check out the posts in this thread,

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_harddrive&message.id=85794

More RAID information in the D-8400 owner's manual, pages 21-29.

Bev.

DrewGE · Answer

Bev,   Thanks for the quick reply. I haven't split them yet but it sounds pretty straight forward. As long as I've got you, could I replace one of the drives with a much larger capacity one and let Raid 1 mirror it and be left with a larger drive with everything on it or does it only work with same size volumes or partitions?   Also do you know if the jumpers need to be adjusted or do they use cable sense like ATA drives?   Thanks,   Andrew

shesagordie · Answer

andrewe2

Unlike IDE drives, SATA drives do not use jumpers.

To mirror an hard drive with RAID1 you need two matching hard drives. If you mirror a 160gb drive to a 250gb, you will only get a total of160gb.

Before starting this, make certain to backup the data you want to save, "just in case" and have the Dell XP reinstallation disk on hand.

Bev.

Please don't send me questions about your system by DCF Messenger.
Post the issue in the appropriate Board, where they will be answered.

Storage, Drives & Media

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