RAID to NOT RAID then back again

Paul11

Paul11

Paul11

Soldato
Joined
28 Sep 2003
Posts
10,407
Location
London
if i have a raid set up (raid0)

and want to plug in another HD and boot from it (load windows on it) to do some tests..

but be able to plug back my raid drives and boot from them again after


will i get any problems ? or is it quite straight forward.
 
No you would not get any problems, its as straight forward as it sounds.

Once you have a working single disk as C: and you plug your RAID0 set back into the board, ensure that you set the single disk as the first boot drive in the BIOS. Otherwise your RAID0 set will try and take control.

I have done this succesfully several times.

I even cloned with acronis from my RAID0 set too a single drive!
 
You shouldn't need to remove the RAID drives to boot from another drive unless you have run out of SATA ports. Just change the primary boot drive in the BIOS.
 
If you're going to install a test OS on the other HDD then you're better off having it as the only drive connected otherwise you might end up with bits of the new install on the RAID array which could cause you problems in the long run.

It's worth checking to see if you have a second SATA controller (some boards do, some don't) onboard. If you do then use that for the testing and disable the other controller in the BIOS temporarily.
 
True, it might be safer to remove the RAID drives first just incase you have finger trouble during the OS install. ;)
 
It's not finger trouble that you need to worry about. Windows will put the boot files on the drive with the lowest Disk ID regardless of whether that's the drive you're targetting for the install or not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom