Exactly! I don't want it even knowing the computer exists.
In all seriousness, my apologies Hawkeye. I should have been more clear. HW RAID Controllers do not have drivers. The Spanned Logical or Virtual (whichever you prefer) drive created by the controller based on expansion input at setup, of course has the normal
disk and
partition manager drivers or as you correctly point out, the computer could not boot from it. (that talking is OK by me!) I took a peak at your configuration. You seem to like indesctrutable HDDs. 5x WD 250G WD2500KS (Not sure, either 16 or maybe even 32 cache). However, you do not mention how they are configured. By virtue of you owning them, my guess is you know that a RAID configuration will show in Hardware IDs as:
SCSI\Disk___INTEL________RT3WB0802.22 (The name of the HW RAID Controller I use followed by the 2.22 firmware each of the 6 - Vertex 3 SSD's which make up my array, not just the Boot drive selected at setup.
The 1-Port so-called Hardware PCIe Controller I purchased was specifically for 1 HDD backup drive for my RAID Array. The 2TB WD Cav Black. The issue is that my image backups are coming up IDE, which is what they would do if I plugged the the WD into any of the mainboard controllers. It does not matter if I set the BIOS to AHCI. That WD after my image backup reads like this:
IDE\DiskWDC_WD2002FAEX-007BA0___________________05.01D05 when it should read: SCSI\Disk____WDC_WD2002FAEX-007BA0___________________05.01D05
They should read SCSI. My main RAID Controller, the Intel RT3WB080 has no drivers.
The Spanned Logical or Virtual (whichever you prefer) drive created by the controller based on my expansion input at setup, of course has the normal
disk and
partition manager drivers or as you correctly point out, the computer could not boot from it. Note from details, HW IDs:
If you go into my DM > Storage Controllers and right click on my RT3WB080 and then navigate to drivers, the only choice you may select is Drivers and you get the message (no drivers installed). No need, it has its own BIOS. All HW RAID Controllers do. The other 4 are roll back, update,uninstall, disable and none are accessable.
Same Place DM> Storage Controllers, select the one port Controller and then navigate to drivers, the only inaccessable one is rollback (I've only used this for a couple of months) but everything else can be accessed and when you select drivers, you see this:
mvs.91xx
mvxmm.sys
mv91xxm.dll
It's renamed itself Marvel 91xx SATA 6G Controller
However, in an odd way
you might have given me the answer I need. It may not be what I WANT, but if it works, I'll live with it.
It's rather easy to fix a mistake people can make when they installs their OS but forget to go into the BIOS and select AHCI and the defauly is an older mainboard at IDE. A frend who once did that was silly enough to go into the BIOS and select AHCI and believe that Windows could work magic and fix his mistake. It can't fix its own mistakes, but I digress.
Anyway, you and I both know what my friend saw at reboot and he's stubborn and tried to go back to IDE. For that I punished him and made him fix it the correct way via the registry and he learned something and did not have to reinstall everything, nor lose all his files. (he also became aware of the concept of backup).
Your comment "
Talk to the computer" made my bias memory think. I hate mainboard storage except for Opticals. But I love my ASUS which which keeps my i7 3960 below 50 C and the Mainboard barely above 45 C at a constant 4,800 MHz and the 2,133 RAM at about 2280 or so.
Since I have nothing but Opticals, I'll try changing the Maiboard BIOS to RAID and NOT AHCI. Pull the Sata plug out of the controller and stick it into a SATA2 port. Not sure why, but I feel safer in SATA2 than SATA3 on mainboard storage.
This will take a few minutes, but I'll be back. THANKS in advance, I think this might work with one drive. Worse case I'd take 2 x 1TB and RAID-0 them using the (I'd rather not say) and then simply backup the internal backup as well as the RAID array. I don't even trust RAID-6 in BIOS RAID.