Solved Removing Raid 0

The-Hive · Jun 4, 2023

Hi Guys, I need some help here please. I have a laptop with 2 x 2TB ssd's in raid format so the computer sees it as just 1 x 4TB ssd. I want to remove raid and have 2 separate drive, one for boot and things, the other for data and programs, at the moment it is partitioned into a C and D drive.. Anyone know how I can do this using Macrium for backing up and restoring.
I was thinking along the lines of doing a full backup then booting to bios and removing raid .....What happens when I reboot.... I was then going to use Macrium to restore the C partition to the newly created C ssd and then do the same with D. This may be totally stupid, that is why I need help or a step by step Guide.
Also if it goes totally wrong could I go back to raid in bios and do a full restore with Macrium. Any help or advice or a step by step guide would be much appreciated. Thanks, I hope this makes sense

Ghot · Jun 4, 2023

@The-Hive

That won't work as far as I know. The "backup" will contain the RAID driver and expect to be restored to a RAID setup.

What probably will work, is to make the backup and store it on some other drive.
Then do a clean Windows 11 install on one of the 2TB drives, after they've been de-RAIDed.

Then... use Macrium's "explore the backup" function to "retrieve" what data you can retrieve, from that backup.

jimbo45 · Jun 4, 2023

@The-Hive

Simply back data up as data files to external drive and then restore.

You need to manually check that restoring data doesn't spill over to the 2nd vol.

Personally I can't see any advantage in using a 2 X 2 TB combo over a 1X4 TB in raid 0 format -- since these days ssd's are very reliable and it's much easier having essentially a 1 X 4 TB disk than 2 X 2 TB disks.

If you regularly back up data - no problem if RAID 0 arrau breaks - simply restore data. I've used RAID 0 on a NAS server with classical spinners for "Donkeys years" now - no problem especially since I can compose the aggregate array from different size Hdd's !!.

Cheers
jimbo

hdmi · Jun 5, 2023

bobkn · Jun 5, 2023

hdmi said:
How Do I Delete a RAID Array?

How to Remove Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST)...

All data and programs will be lost.

The-Hive · Jun 5, 2023

bobkn said:
All data and programs will be lost.

That's why I was going to restore a previously made image of C and D partitions to the "new" C and D drives with Macrium after re-installing Windows, and if it all goes wrong, it is not the end of the world. Believe it or not the M18 R1 has a better/ faster everything than the Area 51M R2 ( see my system specs ) yet the Area 51 beats it hands down on just about everything

bobkn · Jun 5, 2023

The-Hive said:
(snip)Believe it or not the M18 R1 has a better/ faster everything than the Area 51M R2 ( see my system specs ) yet the Area 51 beats it hands down on just about everything

Seems very odd.

Maybe it's because the M18 R1 is being run at 25660 X 1600.

The-Hive · Jun 6, 2023

bobkn said:
Seems very odd.

Maybe it's because the M18 R1 is being run at 25660 X 1600.

I have no idea about this one and as always dell are useless. Microsoft programs etc are like lightning but all other programs have that 1 or 2 second delay unlike the A51

hdmi · Jun 7, 2023

The-Hive said:
I have no idea about this one and as always dell are useless. Microsoft programs etc are like lightning but all other programs have that 1 or 2 second delay unlike the A51

Verify your BIOS settings IMO (anything that could relate to performance/optimization) and yes, setting up a pair of SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration tends to hurt both the storage performance and the longevity of the SSDs in question. Also, RAID 0 very often is more suitable for HDDs (and worth considering to use only in some certain, specific, situations where large suequential read operations on the HDDs in question are among the most critical of performance bottlenecks to tackle) than it is for SSDs.

bobkn said:
All data and programs will be lost.

That's right. Merely uninstalling the Intel RST/RSTe driver and changing the setting in BIOS to AHCI (and disabling VMD─if VMD was enabled) is not recommended, so doing a clean install of Windows is the only way to properly remove the RST/RSTe driver AFAIK.

Scannerman · Sep 7, 2023

I wish I had seen this sooner but at the time I was recovering from being evacuated from the forest fires in my area. The quickest way to do this (without messing up any other arrays you might have) is to cold boot the PC and wait for the pretty coloured text to appear in the Intel interface you should get before your PC takes you to your OS. Just hit CTRL "i" (as in i for intel) and you will have the option of setting any of the drives you select there back to "normal" status. After this is done you can reboot your PC and reformat the drives that you reset.

hdmi · Sep 7, 2023

Scannerman said:
as in i for intel

intel stands for integrated electronics, so... the solution to this prolem has been integrated into the links that were posted in my 1st reply to this thread.