Raid 5 - 4 2tb - Windows Server 2012 R2 software raid.

[unknownerrors]

So I setup this raid 5 in Windows 2012 server (software raid) since i have had second thoughts about using raid 5 and have changed my OS to FreeNAS. After installing FreeNAS I had trouble getting any of the drives to import (format) so I booted up to my utility boot disc and tried a number of partition managers none of which could blow out the partitions. One thing i have yet to try is hooking the drives back up to a windows OS and converting them to basic disks. Could that be my fix?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, unknownerrors!

I'd suggest you to reset the RAID array and start over again. Where did you install the OS? If it's on the drives in the array, I'd recommend getting another one for the OS or an SSD. The parity calculations to recover the data in case of drive failure might result in a very slow performance issues.
I'm not sure this will fix the issue, but you can at least try using Disk Management to initialize the drives. However, I am confused. Can you please tell me what is the OS that you are using?
If it's FreeNAS, keep in mind that it only supports write/read with ZFS file system format on the HDDs. Any other file format like NTFS, FAT, EXT2/3 are supported in "read-only" to allow data migration, and that's it.
If it's Windows Server 2012, I believe you can simply go to Disk Management there and see how the drives appear, even try to re-initialize them if needed. Please share some screenshots if you can, though.

SuperSoph_WD