Raid drive back to normal drive help needed

Hard Drives, Optical Drives, USB keys, Flash memory. Need help with or have experiences with a storage device? Share it in here!
Post Reply
User avatar
KnightRid
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 5:21 am
Location: Dallastown, PA

Raid drive back to normal drive help needed

Post by KnightRid »

OK, I am taking my 4-2tb drives I had on the mb raid and want to use them as single drives again since i got the Synology 1512+ with the 5-3tb drives, but I am having problems. I formatted one in an external USB holder and copied files to it but when I put it back in the computer it still says it is part of the old raid array (not even the same computer) and cant read it unless I initialize it. I have tried the other 3 drives in the computer with the same results and it will not let me initialize in windows and it keeps showing each one as 8gb (size of the initial raid). I downloaded the seagate seatools software and with the drives in the external usb holder I am doing a full usb format to try and remove the RAID designation. My problem is, it is taking forever! It seems like it may be done doing 1 drive by tomorrow afternoon, maybe morning. Is there a quicker way to get rid of the RAID footnote? Will this full usb format even do that?

It shouldn't be this hard to take raid drives and put them back as standard single drives. I am not very patient with it right now cause I am about to saw off my own neck to relieve some of the pain so I searched but probably not very thorough.
Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me :finga:
User avatar
kenc51
Legit Extremist
Legit Extremist
Posts: 5167
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:56 pm
Location: Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Contact:

Re: Raid drive back to normal drive help needed

Post by kenc51 »

I'm not certain, but you could delete the mbr & partition table.
I only know the Linux way though.

Code: Select all

 sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=512 count=1     
(replace X with the letter you drive is assigned)
User avatar
KnightRid
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 4295
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 5:21 am
Location: Dallastown, PA

Re: Raid drive back to normal drive help needed

Post by KnightRid »

kenc51 wrote:I'm not certain, but you could delete the mbr & partition table.
I only know the Linux way though.
I thought that also but with what I was reading the fixmbr doesnt work (windows). Main thing i was reading was to write 0's or 1's to the drive to "clean" it and that gets rid of the raid stuff. Something about raid info being written the the HSA or something like that and that is why removing the MBR doesnt work. I dunno. Maybe I will try to live boot into a linux distro and give your method a try. It would be a lot faster than waiting hours upon hours for this full erase (1/5th done and its been about 4 hours so far).
Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me :finga:
Post Reply