Raid help!

[thesaint sfc]

I've got an old Dell Dimension 9150 desktop which I'm trying to setup as a media centre PC.

 

I've stuck a 500GB SATA hdd in there with a tonne of data on which used to be part of a mirrored raid - but now isn't. The problem is that when I boot up with the dimension it picks the drive up as being a raid member - when it isn't! Do you know how I can mark this as not being a member of a raid? So that the system doesn't pick it up and will boot into windows?

Edited 17 November, 2008 by thesaint sfc

[magnet]

I've got an old Dell Dimension desktop which I'm trying to setup as a media centre PC.

 

I've stuck a 500GB SATA hdd in there with a tonne of data on which used to be part of a mirrored raid - but now isn't. The problem is that when I boot up with the dimension it picks the drive up as being a raid member - when it isn't! Do you know how I can mark this as not being a member of a raid? So that the system doesn't pick it up and will boot into windows?

 

I was under the impression the raid array info was stored on the raid controller, not the disk. Do you get the same thing if you put another disk in the PC?

[Pancake]

I was under the impression the raid array info was stored on the raid controller, not the disk. Do you get the same thing if you put another disk in the PC?

 

Same here, the disk itself should be "dumb" as to how it is being used.

[thesaint sfc]

Well i thought this to - no reason that this system should think it's part of a raid though so I guess not.

 

I've got the options of raid autodetect/ahci, raid autodetect/ata, raid on and combination in the bios.

 

My system wouldn't detect my hdd when I was trying to do a fresh install unless I used combination - worked fine then. However in using this mode on 2 of the 4 SATA ports work. I need 3 of them to work. I tried changing it to ahci - reports one of my drives as being a raid drive and then bluescreens and wont boot into windows - same with ATA.

 

Tried unplugging both drives - boots into windows fine with both ahci and ata. It's reporting one of my 2 500gb drives to be a raid drive.

 

I have

1x 160GB - OS drive.

2x 500GB - Data drives.

[thesaint sfc]

For those interested (probably no one) I had to copy all the data from one 500GB drive to the other (fortunately there was enough space) I then formatted the blank drive and booted up with autodetect/ata. It still picked it up on the raid which is bizzare as I've never used the raid in this system so I can't understand why it was picking up the drives. I deleted the raid which obviously would have wiped the data if I hadn't transfered it to the other drive. I then booted up again and it didn't pick it up as a raid. Plugged in the other drive with all the data on - picked it up as a raid. I'm not transferring all the data from the 500gb drive with data to the formatted drive so that I can delete this drive from the raid - then hopefully I'll be sorted!

 

What a sodding nightmare!

[Pancake]

Long winded but seems to make sense. Now to work out how/why the system is picking up the RAID settings...

[magnet]

For those interested (probably no one) I had to copy all the data from one 500GB drive to the other (fortunately there was enough space) I then formatted the blank drive and booted up with autodetect/ata. It still picked it up on the raid which is bizzare as I've never used the raid in this system so I can't understand why it was picking up the drives. I deleted the raid which obviously would have wiped the data if I hadn't transfered it to the other drive. I then booted up again and it didn't pick it up as a raid. Plugged in the other drive with all the data on - picked it up as a raid. I'm not transferring all the data from the 500gb drive with data to the formatted drive so that I can delete this drive from the raid - then hopefully I'll be sorted!

 

What a sodding nightmare!

 

PC's are strange beasts, who the hell would choose to work with then for a living..........oh Doh!