# How to "undo" Raid?



## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

I just had to setup Windows on a backup drive, eek!

As I was booting up with my 2 raid0 drives from a previous setup I was having issues trying to figure out how to get those 2 drives back to standard. In windows disk management I cannot even see them listed...

In  windows 7 setup I did however make the mistake of deleting the drives, then I rebooted hoping they would show again but I cannot "see" them.

How do I get this fixed?


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## DanishDevil (Jun 10, 2010)

I was about to type "Disk Management" then I read that you already tried that 

Not 100% sure. I'm sure somebody on here knows the answer, though.


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Yeah I am completley zonked on this one.

windows properties and device manager shows them installed as does the bios, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why they seem to be invisible in DMGT.

In the meantime I am going to go into the RAID setup through the bios and see if I can get something done. Ill be back here in a few, hopefully if I still need help I will come back to a possible solution. Thanks


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## brandonwh64 (Jun 10, 2010)

shevanel said:


> I just had to setup Windows on a backup drive, eek!
> 
> As I was booting up with my 2 raid0 drives from a previous setup I was having issues trying to figure out how to get those 2 drives back to standard. In windows disk management I cannot even see them listed...
> 
> ...



OUCH! i did the same thing about a month ago! i lost about 800GBs of personal data cause i formatted my backup drive instead of my raid array! now when i have to format i just pop open the side of my case and unplug all drives except for my raid so i make NO mistakes


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## DanishDevil (Jun 10, 2010)

You're sure they're not hiding in the bottom part with all the blocks and they're not initialized or marked active?


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## kenkickr (Jun 10, 2010)

I had a issue like this one time and ended up having to go to Western Digital's site and grabbing their Lifeguard utility to format/repartition the drives.  Release the drives from the Raid utility(The bios RAID menu you only have 2-5sec to access) and maybe try the manufacturers website for a HD tool to format/partition.


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## garyinhere (Jun 10, 2010)

i don't think you  can undo a raid0 without a reinstall. I jst looked at mine and it shows up as disk 0 in disk management but only gives me partition options. maybe someone here knows more than me though!


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## Bo$$ (Jun 10, 2010)

make an image of your os then place it back on a single disk


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

I was in raid options in bios, enable raid, set drives... but upon restart the drives do not show up in windows installation.

LOL, I am using a drive that has all my media on it and after installing win7 x86 I have 4.95 gb left lmao



as far as making an image of the disk... thats fine and all but when the bios will not recognize the disk is there then it makes it kinda hard for the drive to be used, am i wrong?


Samsung doesnt have any useful software for hdd restoration from raid.. Im going to try kenkikrs idea and try lifeguard


edit: KenKicker is the man, Thanks dude. All good to go!!!


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 10, 2010)

ah i see. well you could have always opened up the command terminal and used fdisk.


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Well... the drives have been formatted and are usable within windows that im on now, but I rebooted to try and reinstall win7 on the drives but now it says "Unable to create partiton or missing system partition disk" inside the win7 setup menu...

WTF do I have going on now?


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## kenkickr (Jun 10, 2010)

Were those drives on the Raid controller?  If so try setting the raid controller to IDE in the bios and see what happens.


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## Easy Rhino (Jun 10, 2010)

shevanel said:


> Well... the drives have been formatted and are usable within windows that im on now, but I rebooted to try and reinstall win7 on the drives but now it says "Unable to create partiton or missing system partition disk" inside the win7 setup menu...
> 
> WTF do I have going on now?



lol. i dont really know much about setting up raid for windows. do you need drivers ?


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Im on a new mobo... its  set to native ide.. im not doing raid on this one but i want to use both my drives i used in raid on the last mobo.

All drives are fine on this install of win7... i can see them use them and format them...

if i reboot and try to install win7 onto the "old raid drives" I really only see 1 Disk0 New Volume: but it says cannot creat or find system partiton..

I need to get the win7 flashdrive to install on the "old raid drives" hopefully.


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

See, all the drives are showing up as they should, why cant i install win 7 onto them?


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## DRDNA (Jun 10, 2010)

shevanel said:


> See, all the drives are showing up as they should, why cant i install win 7 onto them?
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/100610/dds.jpg
> 
> ...



Remove the disk that you currently have windows installed on, then image the drive you want Win 7 on.
Damn also just noticed you have windows installed on the F drive and the boot file on the C drive ..not too good.


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

What do you mean image the drive?

What mess have I created, how do I fix with using a flash drive to install windows?


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## DRDNA (Jun 10, 2010)

shevanel said:


> What do you mean image the drive?
> 
> What mess have I created, how do I fix with using a flash drive to install windows?



Image the drive=Install the operating system.


Do you have information you are trying to save on any of the drives?


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Only the drive I am using now I want to save.. I only installed windows on it to get to this forum lol

I think I am going to try using the win 7 cd instead of the flash drive... maybe teh flash is confusing win 7 setup..

Then I am going to try and rearrange boot order and stuff if the cd doesnt work..

BBIAB


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## DRDNA (Jun 10, 2010)

shevanel said:


> Only the drive I am using now I want to save.. I only installed windows on it to get to this forum lol
> 
> I think I am going to try using the win 7 cd instead of the flash drive... maybe teh flash is confusing win 7 setup..
> 
> ...



Remove the harddrives that you are not imaging(installing the operation system) then install windows 7 on the drive that is left. after that reinstall the other two harddrives.


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## btarunr (Jun 10, 2010)

If you had "quick initialize" (something that sounds similar) option checked when creating the RAID volume in the RAID BIOS, then bad news. That option removes MBR from disk 0 of the array, and you end up with "Unable to create partiton" during setup . Swap the disks (set port 0 to disk 1 and port 1 to disk 0), set the controller to AHCI, and run Windows setup again. You can partition that disk (which is now your second disk) from Windows once the setup is complete.


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

I did exactly what you just said to do BTA after I read it from a google search and BAM. I'm installing WIN7 as we speak on the old Raid0 drives... thanks for explaining that incase anyone else ever stumbles across this issue.

That's exactly what happened, the MBR was missing... This was the first time I ever had to go through this because my raid0 setup was my first.. next time I will surely remember!

Thanks to everyone that stopped by to help me out, i appreciate it!


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## DanishDevil (Jun 10, 2010)

I think that may be the fullest hard drive I have ever seen in My Computer


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Thats why I chose to not go RAID0 on this new setup, I need more hdd space...

I kinda wish I did though, I don't mind a cpu downgrade, but this hdd speed downgrade is hurting.


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## kenkickr (Jun 10, 2010)

RAID 0 though shouldn't affect space since your combining HD's to act as one but give you more "speed"...act the cost of data vulnerability.  Just glad to see you got it working buddy.


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## DanishDevil (Jun 10, 2010)

Buy an SSD then!


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## shevanel (Jun 10, 2010)

Soon real soon!


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