Reformatting Raid0 array

[Gurkin]

Hey I recently got a ssd and wanted to make it the boot drive and have my two hard drives in Raid0 as storage but ran into a few problems while doing that. I think I messed up when I used the same sata port that my current raid0 array was using so it wouldn't let me boot from the ssd,only the array.

So currently I'm using just the ssd and now I just want to reformat the two hard drives that I had in Raid0 but when I tried that the delete partition screen for the windows install it only showed the one hard drive and the ssd (I'm assuming its because the bios sata controller wasn't set to raid just ahci for the ssd). So it wouldn't let me delete the partition. I just want to know if I can just switch where the sata cables from my two hard drives are on the motherboard to the marvell controller instead of the intel controller which it was plugged into originally and delete the partition and install windows on both hard drives (personally don't want to bother with a raid array again for the time being) so I'd be making them two separate hard drives again and using the ssd for booting.


Computer parts:
Foxconn Bloodrage LGA 1366 Intel x58 ATX Intel motherboard
SAMSUNG 840 EVO
Two Western Digital WD Black WD6401AALS 640GB in RAID0
Windows 7 Home premium 64 bit

Thanks

 

[ss202sl]

If I am reading this correctly, then your 2 HDD's are still in a raid 0 volume, and so you see 1 drive as the raid 0 volume on Windows. I would go into the raid setup(from bios), and delete the raid group so there is no raid at all. Then in Windows, you should be able to go to disk management and see your 2 HDD's and it should allow you to create a volume on each one and format them.

 

[reedo_43]

That would probably work. Can't hurt to try.

 

[ss202sl]

I think that if you just move the drives to the other controller, it could work, but you may get an error on boot up looking for the drives that are in the raid. It may boot, but it would still show the error, and may actually put a delay in booting.

 

[Gurkin]

Well at the moment the two drives are not plugged in because if i remember correctly it wouldnt boot to my ssd even though it was set to 1st on boot priority and i think that is because both hard drives and the ssd were plugged into the sata ports controlled by the intel one, so can i just move the two sata cables connected to the hard drives that were in raid0 and put them in the two ports for the sata marvell controller.

 

[photonboy]

Well at the moment the two drives are not plugged in because if i remember correctly it wouldnt boot to my ssd even though it was set to 1st on boot priority and i think that is because both hard drives and the ssd were plugged into the sata ports controlled by the intel one, so can i just move the two sata cables connected to the hard drives that were in raid0 and put them in the two ports for the sata marvell controller.

If you did that then you should simply have two separate drives like normal.

You don't need to move them though and the Intel one probably works better especially for an SSD.

So I'd just leave things as they are and turn off RAID in the BIOS. Then those drives would read like normal. All the data would be lost of course.

other:
Slightly off topic but some motherboards specify in the manual to NOT use DVD/BD drives for certain SATA connectors. I had weird issues (forget now) and discovered it was due to connecting my DVD burner to a SATA controller only meant for HDD's/SSD's.

 

[Gurkin]

Hmm now that you mention the dvd drive for certain SATA connectors that might have been the problem I was having when I switched the Intel ICH10 SATA mode from raid to ahci I was getting this.

http://i.imgur.com/iAEtmgp.jpg