Complete Hard Drive WIPE, RAID

[cuckoo4]

I've been trying to reverse RAID-0 without any luck. I want each of my two drives at full capacity. I intend on backing up to disc a couple times a week...my goal is to get a new system in a years time.

I don't care about the information on these drives, it can all go away. I know of some free programs that completely wipe the drives clean...

The hope is that this will get rid of everything including the RAID software, and then all I have to do is go back in and install XP...then see my two full drives available.

Can you give me any tips/pitfalls, never done this before. Is there anything I need to do to prepare once they're clean...

Thanks!

 

[rvnguy]

cuckoo4,

You have been having problems with this in other posts.

Let's start this one right; Please post your mobo make & mdl, raid controller if you have one other than on board, you hd mfg & mdl's.

The hope is that this will get rid of everything including the RAID software, and then all I have to do is go back in and install XP...then see my two full drives available.

Sorry but if this is why you are doing this it will not produce the result that you are seeking. RAID is implemented in two places, One in system BIOS and the other on the RAID controller's own BIOS. Until you disable your RAID in these locations it will continue to look for it.

Please post back with consise details

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[cuckoo4]

rvnguy:

I tried to break the array upon boot multiple times, but would always reconfigure. I appreciate your help, let me know if you need any additional information. I can provide screenshots of my system data if necessary.

I want to remove RAID and make a new start, utilizing my 40G & 80G internal drives...

- AMD Athlon XP 1900+
- Asus A7V333 ACPI BIOS Revision 1017
- MAXTOR 6E040L0, MAXTOR 6L040J2
- Promise Technology MBFastTrak133 (tm) "Lite" BIOS
- 1 + 0 Stripe

Thanks again,

M

 

[rvnguy]

cuckoo4,

With this slightly older BIOS/mobo; there are no specific settings in the system BIOS for RAID. I would look closely though as there could be a setting to enable the onboard promise controller. If you can find this, disable the promise controller and it should not function to allow the RAID controller to interface to the drives. This is all that should need to be done to allow the drives to function as separate IDE drives. If you have a manual this setting should be covered there.

If no joy there:

So if you can recall how these drives were connected previously, re connect them and during the boot sequence you should be presented with a prompt to press "F4" or ctrl+A to enter the promise RAID controller BIOS select this.

In this controller BIOS disable or break the RAID array and also disable the RAID function.

when either of these are done. you will have to reformat/partition these drives as the spanned data will be useless.

You can let the xp install do this for the boot drive, but you will have to do it for the second drive after the OS is installed.

Hope this helps.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all