Raid hdd issues?

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ingeborgdot

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I went over to a friends house to work on their computer for them and ended up replacing their video card. As I was working on it I was messing around with their intel raid storage and noticed that it was not working anymore and it said the driver was not installed. I went into bios and checked and somehow the bios was now on ide instead of raid. How the heck it got changed no one knows because they have no idea how to get into the bios.
I have never had to do this before but what am I going to do to get the raid back on for them. Do I unhook one hdd and then go into bios and turn on raid and start the computer with one hdd and then tell it to rebuild? Would someone be willing to give me step by step instructions on how to do this if you know because I have never had to do this before. Thanks.
 
Unless I missed it this is to install a raid which has already been done. What the problem is here is that I need to go into the bios and turn the dang raid back on and was wondering the correct procedure. Thanks though.
 
Just re-enable RAID in the BIOS. Check the RAID BIOS (CTRL+I usually, you'll get a secondary POST screen and prompt). Make sure it all looks fine under that.

If you want to get real fancy, you can rebuild the array inside Windows with the Intel software, but I personally never bother with Intel's RAID software other than to verify working arrays while inside Windows.

This problem can happen especially if you update BIOS versions.
 
You CANNOT enable SATA / RAID within the bios if the operating system is already installed. I just read up on this and am about to install a SATA drive on a clients computer this weekend.

Most newer motherboards come with a BIOS setting that will allow a SATA connection to 'emulate' the IDE environment so the MB and SATA drive can talk to eachother. So if you don't mind not using RAID or the additional speed of SATA you can still install the OS to the SATA drive, it will just be in IDE mode.

If you do want to install the drive properly you have to enable AHCI, it is disabled by default allowing people to install a SATA drive in IDE mode natively) and enable RAID. Then during the install of the OS you have to press F6 to install the 3rd party drivers for the SATA controller (found on your motherboards website). At that point you have to have those drivers in the root directory of a floppy disk and then point the installation to that floppy. At that point it will install the proper SATA drivers for the drive. Once that is complete and windows installs properly you'll have to install a RAID tool to get RAID to work properly - the MB website / resource CD probably has that on there.

Desktop Boards - Troubleshooting Serial ATA / RAID issues
Intel® Matrix Storage Manager - Changing and/or choosing serial ATA modes

Sorry i seriously just read up on this last night before I went to install this SATA drive on a clients computer. Google the name of the MB to find the proper drivers.

I repeat DO NOT enable this in the BIOS, it could render the OS innoperable. Chalk it up to 'oops should have installed SATA in the first place' or reinstall the OS.
 
The raid had been up and running but somehow it got switched. When I do not know but it was switched to ide from raid. I know it was working at one point earlier because I had worked with it.
 
Okay, just make sure the OS wasn't reinstalled w/o you knowing - because that may cause issues. Hopefully it was JUST disabled in the bios.
 
Ehh, I wouldn't do that, if that machine had Raid 0 before then someone has deleted the array and reinstalled windows, if it is Raid 1, then the array was deleted and they started from scratch, either way, if you try to rebuild the array you will have to reinstall windows, unless this is a stand alone raid array and used as some sort of storage/backup destination...
 
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