Author Topic: reformatting old RAID drives (Read 2411 times)

Raider Bill · « **on:** December 28, 2009, 05:52:35 PM »

I have 3 hard drives that were used as RAID backups and are formatted as RAID drives broken into 2 sections.
I'd like to reformat them each as a single drive. I tried format through explorer but that just reformatted them broken into to 2 as before.
How can I make them single drives again?

HELP!

Warbird · « **Reply #1 on:** December 28, 2009, 06:52:02 PM »

What types of drives are these (SATA, IDE)? What kind of RAID array were they in (1, 0, 5, 1+0, etc)? Are they in the system that the RAID was set up in or have you yanked them from one system and put them in another? What type of format did you do? Depending on the answers to these questions, a simple format will not do it. You may need to delete all existing partitions on the drives, add a new one, then format. Or you may need to 'break' the RAID first, then do the format.

Ianab · « **Reply #2 on:** December 28, 2009, 07:18:39 PM »

Like Warbird says, you need to remove the partitions on the drives.

In WinXP thats via Contrl Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Managenemt / Disk Management.

That should let you remove the existing partition, create a new one and format it for normal use.

With a Fancy Raid controller their may be some more steps involved.

Ian

Raider Bill · « **Reply #3 on:** December 29, 2009, 08:24:02 AM »

I took them out of a old machine. I believe they are IDE drives. I'm going to use them as backup drives to work stations externally. I'll try to repartition today.
Thanks

Raider Bill · « **Reply #4 on:** December 30, 2009, 09:49:13 AM »

Thanks guys it worked!

Warbird · « **Reply #5 on:** December 30, 2009, 11:52:25 AM »

Sweet. Have fun!

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