I have a Sony Vaio VGN-AR41S
Which has Vista Home Premuim and 2 x160GB Harddrives RAID 0 Striped.
The RAID status monitor installed was reporting one of the drives as failed, which was true. I took a backup image of the striped volume using Ghost and sent it to a server.
I took out the failed drive, I want to turn the RAID off and just use the single drive. How do I turn the RAID off though, can't find the option anywhere, bios etc?
Plan is to send the backed up image from the server back to the working drive.
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I am unable to boot into Windows anymore.
I am begining to think its software RAID, as there is no option on the boot up for entering the RAID configuration/ or in the bios.
I want to recover from the backed up image, but when I get into Ghost it doesn't see my single harddrive. I have the sata drivers on a floppy, how do I load these?
You need to take the drive out of laptop, connect it via enclosure to working machine and convert to Basic.
Then connect the drive back to laptop and boot the machine from Ghost recovery media.
But, I am considering that restore could fail as you cannot build dynamic stripe in non Windows mode.
The solution for you would be restoring partition by partition (if you had several of them) to 1 HDD. First restore Windows and try to boot from a single HDD.
If its RAID 0 like you indicated, this isn't possible. Since data is striped on the drives, you need both drives to run the system. If one of the drives failed, you'll need to start over. If you were receiving a failed disk error from within your OS, it may have been in fact RAID 1...if this were the case, you'd need to break the mirror with the Intel Matrix Storage Manager upon boot.
http://www.intel.com/suppo
He has dynamic stripe done via Windows. Also unrealone1 was wise enough to take backup of entire data and system with Ghost. So now he needs the way to restore back.
To do this this he needs either to create same configuration under Windows or restore from backup to single HDD if used space and Ghost allows this to him.
And the restore target drive should be Basic in this case.
Ahhh...I re-read. If you keep RAID enabled, you should still be able to restore to the single drive. In fact, it would be much easier because you wouldn't need to change your drivers. The only issue I can forsee is your partition size...if your image is 320gb and you're going down to 160, its not going work and you'll need to make some modifications.
I was under the impression Hirens would let you add drivers when booting (F6), similar to the Windows environment. If not, either make a new Hirens boot disk and add the drivers (you'll need to edit the image) or just use Windows PE to boot ghost...it will definitely recognize your drives.
You have an intel chipset and the link I gave you is applicable for your motherboard.
You can use the trial version...
http://www.syman
THANKs for all the help and suggestions.
But I resolved it this way.
I spoke to Sony Vaio technical support who advised me there is no way of getting into the RAID configuration on this Laptop without running the Sony Vaio recovery disks (which I was beginning to believe) which we didn't have and would be at a cost of £40 for the disks!!!
I declined, I decided to put the failed drive back in. Then when I went back to the BIOS wahhhheeyy the RAID option appeared! I was able to change it from HIDE to SHOW. Then saved settings, and rebooted Laptop then the RAID option came up. "Press CTRL I to enter RAID Config"
BOOOOOOOOM!
But wasn't the question how to disable raid? You really didn't disable anything...you just allowed the Intel Matrix Storage Manager option Rom to appear...if you wanted to use just one drive, you could have kept it as is and continued your image installation as suggested. This was really just an unnecessary step...
The only issue with this setup is your old drive contained information from the existing array...in this case you should have asked us how to remove the drive from the existing RAID array. Since we were under the impression the old drive failed, it was considered an unusable device...if the laptop had still been associating the drive with the array, and with no way to enter the option rom, we would have directed you next to install the drive in another pc, wipe and then format. What I'm guessing you did was enter the option rom and delete the raid volume, correct?
Since both Noxcho and myself spect considerable time helping with this, and there were several comments that would help you move on with your restore, I think it would be considered fair if you awarded points...you can always accept multiple solutions, with yours being the accepted solution and ours as assists...
This question contains information and instructions of resolving specific issues so deleting it would delete useful info for future askers.
My suggestion is accept Unrealone1 #25041762 (0 points) as accepted solution, noxcho's #25003838 (250 points) and gikkel's #25003894 (250 points) as asssisted solutions.
Definitely here were done attempts to help to asked but the question itself mislead the experts.
Problem was described as failed drive in software RAID thus solution suggested - restore from backup to bigger drive was the only correct one.
In final posts author provided new details with the solution of his own but this does not reject efforts taken by experts.
Check ID:25045345...Specifically
What I'm guessing you did was enter the option rom and delete the raid volume, correct?
We were both under the impression you could not get to this screen and had no way of doing so. If you had wiped the drive, you would have done the same...
I'm not saying what you did wasn't correct, because it obviously worked...but it was under different pretenses. I'm glad you got everything working :)
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by: noxchoPosted on 2009-08-03 at 04:09:02ID: 25003298
Is the RAID stripe done on hardware level or software level?
Hardware level - right after BIOS you get message to press specific key to get to RAID config utility.
Software level - in Disk Management (right click on My Computer - Manage - Disk Management) you have to dynamic drives with striped volumes.
Can you tell what type is used?