reset disks to non raid

[Picker Leech]

I have a 2 yr old i7 8gb notebook which has been working fine.

I installed kaspersky and my pc now takes 30 mins to boot up. And it crashes.

Since installing kaspersky i have a boot screen message. Which says raid disabled.

If i enter the configuration menu it gives me the option to reset disks to non raid.

Im not technical. The notebook has one hard drive. If i select reset to non raid will that fix my pc?

Ive been dealing with kaspersky tech support and have deleted kaspersky but the issue remains. I correctly uninstalled norton prior to installing kaspersky.

 

[hang-the-9]

Anytime you change RAID settings, you will need to re-install Windows or at least put a new image on it. You can't do it non-destructevly. I'd backup your data and reset the laptop to factor defaults.

Did this issue happen right after you installed the new software? 30 minutes is a very long time for the system to boot even with issues.

 

[Kadathan]

That's pretty odd. Raid architecture obviously requires more than one disk(RAID = redundant array of independant disks), but more than that, I believe there are two types of setups... hardware or software raid. Hardware raid is linux file system based, such that without a raid controller a windows computer can't read it. Software raid is different, and way more unstable. I would guess, given that you're running a notebook with one harddrive, if RAID is enabled in any shape or form it has to be software RAID, which I've never worked with... I'm not sure there's an actual answer to the question you have without someone having had the same problem which I can't find.

There's an argument that, if raid is on, disabling raid will ruin the sectors' arrangement, and your OS will need to be reinstalled, all data lost. But, that's because the sectors have all been spread out over several disks, emulating one large disk. Since you only have one, there's a possibility that when you disable raid, it will leave the organization intact, since it's really not supposed to be on for one disk and theoretically can't do anything anyways. Wish I could give you a more concrete answer, but from where I'm sitting, it might ruin your OS, but it might have 0 impact and actually fix your performance issue.
Setting the disks to non raid shouldn't wipe them, as far as I know, so if the disk is in a usable state after that(i.e. in a windows native file system, and as the sole system disk it has not had it's data striped with another drive) then I think there's a good chance that you will be okay. If you are very worried to try, and you are afraid of losing all of your stuff and for some reason can't back up critical data, you may want to look into getting some imaging software, and create an image of the drive before working with it. That way, if you manage to destroy all of your data, you can just throw the image back on the drive and it should resume normal operation(might need to reactivate some software though).

The only real hook I can see here is if you haven't thoroughly determined that there isn't a second harddrive in the laptop. It would need to be similar in size and type to the first, and if you haven't yet, it might be worth checking the bios hardware menu to see if it is registering another HDD. I've seen some pretty crazy hardware arrangements in laptops and netbooks, I would be suprised if there's a second harddrive hiding somewhere in there but it's certainly not impossible.

 

[Picker Leech]

Anytime you change RAID settings, you will need to re-install Windows or at least put a new image on it. You can't do it non-destructevly. I'd backup your data and reset the laptop to factor defaults.

Did this issue happen right after you installed the new software? 30 minutes is a very long time for the system to boot even with issues.

Yep, I never noticed this issue prior to installing Kaspersky.

I'm taking the notebook to a technician to do a re-install today as it's not gotten any better even after uninstalling Kaspersky and deleting 100gbs of unused software etc.

 

[Picker Leech]

That's pretty odd. Raid architecture obviously requires more than one disk(RAID = redundant array of independant disks), but more than that, I believe there are two types of setups... hardware or software raid. Hardware raid is linux file system based, such that without a raid controller a windows computer can't read it. Software raid is different, and way more unstable. I would guess, given that you're running a notebook with one harddrive, if RAID is enabled in any shape or form it has to be software RAID, which I've never worked with... I'm not sure there's an actual answer to the question you have without someone having had the same problem which I can't find.

There's an argument that, if raid is on, disabling raid will ruin the sectors' arrangement, and your OS will need to be reinstalled, all data lost. But, that's because the sectors have all been spread out over several disks, emulating one large disk. Since you only have one, there's a possibility that when you disable raid, it will leave the organization intact, since it's really not supposed to be on for one disk and theoretically can't do anything anyways. Wish I could give you a more concrete answer, but from where I'm sitting, it might ruin your OS, but it might have 0 impact and actually fix your performance issue.
Setting the disks to non raid shouldn't wipe them, as far as I know, so if the disk is in a usable state after that(i.e. in a windows native file system, and as the sole system disk it has not had it's data striped with another drive) then I think there's a good chance that you will be okay. If you are very worried to try, and you are afraid of losing all of your stuff and for some reason can't back up critical data, you may want to look into getting some imaging software, and create an image of the drive before working with it. That way, if you manage to destroy all of your data, you can just throw the image back on the drive and it should resume normal operation(might need to reactivate some software though).

The only real hook I can see here is if you haven't thoroughly determined that there isn't a second harddrive in the laptop. It would need to be similar in size and type to the first, and if you haven't yet, it might be worth checking the bios hardware menu to see if it is registering another HDD. I've seen some pretty crazy hardware arrangements in laptops and netbooks, I would be suprised if there's a second harddrive hiding somewhere in there but it's certainly not impossible.

Definitely no 2nd hard drive. Bog standard Dell Inspiron.

I'll perhaps suggest to the technician that turning RAID off might fix the issue (fingers crossed) but I'm fully prepared to go for a re-install should I need to. It is a pain to have to do that, but I have backed everything up - other than one Excel file which is now corrupted - which is annoying as it's my main work file.