Splitting RAID1

tophee

tophee

tophee

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Cambridge, or somewhere else in the world
Hi guys,
I've a quick question. I'm running Vista with two hard drives in a mirrored RAID. On occasion I get a messages that the RAID volume has degraded and needs to be rebuilt - usually this is after a crashes or it gets turned off inappropriately (we had the electricians in the other week and they kept tripping the fuses). Then takes ages to rebuild itself.

However, I no longer need data redundancy which is why I installed like this, so can I change this back to a non raid setup by just deleting one of the member disks from the RAID?

Would this cause any problems other? Anything else I should be aware of? It'd be easier than a full reinstall and backing everything up.

Regards
Chris
 
You cant just delete one disk from the RAID array as far as I am aware. You can delete the array, but then you run the risk of losing all your data. I backed up my 500GB RAID 1 the other week to an external hard drive (I ran out of space so was going to run the drives seperatly), however once I deleted the RAID array all my data was still on both the drives and I didn't lose anything.
 
Yes, you can do what you want and it should be fairly painless.

Personally I would mirror the disks and then shut down the PC. Unplug one of them and then in the RAID BIOS look for an option to "Break" the array. Delete it if you have to, but you should be able to remove it safely. Worst case is it deletes all your data, but then you just switch off and plug in the other drive, mirror it and try again :)
 
Thats a good idea doc. Although if he "breaks" or deletes the array, he will need to create a new array to try it again (if what you said fails), which might delete the data also?
 
The RAID signature is held on the Drives, so it should not matter if it is deleted in the RAID BIOS as it will still be present on the unplugged drive.
 
Cool. Thanks for the replies. That sounds promising. Will unplug one and see what happens when I turn it on with just one drive. Hopefully everything will survive.
 
To be on the safe side I would back up the data to another drive just in case you end up selecting the wrong option.
 
Well, I've not managed to get around to this yet, but when I do... a backup of key data will happen. Thanks for the reminder.
 
I'm reviving this thread just to hear success stories. I've determined I don't need ALL my data to be redundant, so I plan on breaking the mirror and running two separate 1TB drives, then just running an incremental backup each night of critical files onto the other drive.

However I'm not too familiar with system hardware these days (my brother put my PC together for me), so I'm not sure how the drives will be recognised once I break the mirror. Is there the whole master/slave thing anymore to contend with, or will my controller assign the two drives as individual devices automatically?

XFX GeForce 8200 AM2+ mATX Motherboard, using the hardware RAID.

How successful has everyone been after breaking their mirrors?
 
Sorry to bump, but hoping someone has an answer. How has your success been at breaking the mirror? Was a full backup necessary, or was it pretty smooth?
 
Well, after backing up all my non-replaceable data I broke the mirror using the Nvidia RAID setup utility (F10 during boot). I simply selected the mirror, hit delete, then NO when it asked me to delete the MBR. It rebooted cleanly and I now have two identicals 1TB drives. I uninstalled a 650MB programme to make sure it affected only the C: drive, and everything seems to be working as it should be.

Now, unfortunately, the Nvidia Control Panel in Windows is asking me to configure the RAID after every boot. It doesn't give an option to just run them as stand-alone drives. I select cancel, but it continues to prompt me after every boot.

I was unable to find any information about this on the Nvidia forums. Does anyone know how I can get rid of this?
 
Found the solution to removing the RAID prompt from NVidia after boot: had to switch my HDD setup in BIOS from RAID to SATA. It booted into the OS, Vista picked up all the devices and installed the drivers, rebooted and all was well. No MBR corruption, either.

Now I have another issue: My E: drive (1TB) which was formerly part of the RAID1 has Windows, Program Files (x86) and Program Files folders that I would like to remove. I renamed the folders and rebooted several times just to make sure the files weren't necessary to operate. But attempts to remove them result in Access Denied.

I am logged in as Administrator. I have booted to safe mode, CMD prompt, and attrib -h -r -s, but get Access Denied when I try to do that.

Should I try to just format the drive?


edit: wow 1TB takes a long time to format in Normal mode. 2 hours so far, 60% done. :eek:
 
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