How to undo raid 0?

I set my AW 17 with 2 750 gb hds and I set it in Raid 0, however I have not even used the 2nd hd (it was left alone and I never changed data) and I want o remove it to try to dual boot OS. How do I do this?

 

Once you set it in RAID 0 both drives are being used. RAID 0 means it writes half the data to one drive and half to the other so it gets improvement by reading from both at the same time (this is a very rudimentary explanation). Only way to "undo" RAID 0 is to backup your data, break the RAID array in BIOS, and then reformat and reinstall Windows.

 

As HTWingNut has stated, RAID 0 combines the drives in a single drive, so you'd have like a ~1.3 TB RAID 0 array and stripes the data over both drives, increasing performance, but with inherent risks (if 1 drives goes kaput, you lose all your data). You should be able to access the RAID controller pre-BIOS on Alienwares, usually Ctrl + I, then delete the array and reinstall your OS. However deleting a volume will result in losing all of your data, so backup your data.

 

I agree with what has already been said. But what makes you think you haven't used the second drive? The OS should see the two drives as only one drive, but with twice the capacity.

 

The fastest and most straightforward thing you can do is to delete the RAID array configuration you created (through BIOS or other startup utility) to set it back as two standalone drives. And then you'll need to re-install Windows from scratch.


It is technically possible to use drive imaging software to capture your existing data partition, and restore it to a non-RAIDed drive to avoid having to reformat. But I don't recommend this, because every step along the way (resizing, cloning) will require you to deal with RAID array drivers, without any meaningful support, and have a pretty significant chance of something going wrong and forcing you to wipe everything and start from scratch anyway. It's far more time-efficient to just accept the time cost of reformatting from scratch, and just do it.

If you're dual-booting into Linux and/or a different version of Windows, it is technically possible to dual-boot using your existing RAID-0 configuration. But I also don't recommend this, because of the same reasons above. It's far more time-efficient to just accept the cost of reformatting, and just do it.


I also noticed that you have two different drives (capacity and spindle speed) in your signature. I hope that you weren't RAID-0'ing those drives together.

If you're looking for performance, then the only meaningful upgrade you can do is to get an SSD to run your OS / apps / games, and keep your 750GB HDD in your laptop to act as bulk storage for content (music, photos, videos, pr0n, etc). A 256GB SSD will run you about $150 - $170 these days, and will give you a *SIGNIFICANT* performance boost.

 

i am currently trying to figure out what clonign software i want so check this thread out. It may help. Acronis will probably work for you.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/732536-good-cloning-software.html

as above stated you can keep your current set up and set up another partition and load linux on it and keep your raid 0 performance boost

 

For cloning from a larger partition to smaller partition, you'll want to resize your partition first before doing the cloning. I like to use G-Parted (for partition resizing) and Clonezilla (for cloning).

But again, you're going to run into problems with RAID array drivers with any program that you use. It's a colossal pain-in-the-rear. Honestly, the faster route is to just delete the RAID array and re-install Windows.