Harddrive RAID1 undo problem (Pictures inside) Please look!

Carl · 27 Aug 2006 at 09:12

Hi,

Basicaly i tried to set up raid 1, but it was unsuccesful because now it wont boot. Id like to just take the setting off without any problems. So when i go to the raid menu pictured below...

I select "Reset Disks to Non-RAID" And it comes up with this.

The qeustion is.. if i proceed, will i really loose all my data on the harddrive im using?

Sorry for the large pictures.

Thanks Carl.

Borden · 27 Aug 2006 at 09:25

I think the RAID setup will show that message whether you're deleting a RAID 1 array or any other array. If it was a RAID 0 array then you would lose your data as it's striped across the drives. But seeing as the data is mirrored in RAID 1 i don't think it will delete the data and i doubt that it will format the drives. Wait for someone else to advise you first as i may be wrong.

I have deleted a RAID setup (it was a single hard drive that needed to be setup as 'JBOD' to get it to work) and all the information was fine. I got the same kind of warning as you. Can't you backup the data before removing RAID?

Carl · 27 Aug 2006 at 09:38

Thanks for the your advice, ill see if i can access the main harddrive somehow to attempt a backup just incase. Anymore light on this situation would be good. Thanks for the input Mark.

Borden · 27 Aug 2006 at 09:42

Carl said:
Thanks for the your advice, ill see if i can access the main harddrive somehow to attempt a backup just incase. Anymore light on this situation would be good. Thanks for the input Mark.

If you can't access it in Windows then you could try a Live Linux CD or something called BartPE which acts as a Live windows cd.

BartPE worked well for me when i couldn't access my drive in windows

m3lv1n · 27 Aug 2006 at 14:37

I think the issue of why you can't boot is due to a different driver being required for RAID as opposed to NON-RAID using ICH5,6,7,R or whatever you have. check you driver CD I'm sure there are 2 different ones well there was with mine I use ICH5R with a pair of Raptors in RAID 1. I assume you installed on a non raid volume then converted to raid 1 after OS install. I think if you using Intel ICH RAID you can break the raid without losing your data always bloody scary when you do it though. If I where you before you do anything use something like norton ghost to create a disk image just in case.

RAID 1 is well worth it though, peace of mind is great. Used to run RAID 0 with my raptors but thought this is just stupid just ended up wasting loads of disk space to backup RAID 0 array incase it collapsed and went for security instead.

Carl · 29 Aug 2006 at 14:24

I tried using ghost but it wouldnt work, i couldnt get a floppy drive to work on my computer, to back it up from dos.. seeing as i couldnt get into windows. So i just proceeded and now its all up the creek the bios is so slow and unresponsive . The harddrives are being detected in my dads computer but nothing showing in "My Computer" Its such a big mess ahh... Cant even get the bios to boot from the windows CD so i can install windows on the empty harddrive.

Ill see what i can do, not my day...!