I have a Dimension 8400 that has onboard SATA Raid controller. I currently have two drives hooked up running Raid 0 array. There are 4 SATA plugs on the mobo.
My question is, can I use the 2 empty SATA plugs and plug in more SATA harddrives even though I already have a raid 0 array going? I don't want the two other harddrives to be in the array (and they can't cause the 2 new harddrives are 500 GB whereas the old ones are 400GB).
I already know the easy solution: Try it and see. I would gladly do that, but I don't have any extra SATA cables. So now I have to drive all the way out to Microcenter to get some SATA cables and I want to know before I go if it's even going to work. If it won't work I'll have to buy an external enclosure etc etc.
Unnecessary explanation:
PS died, took out mobo and messed up hd's. Hd's appear fine in bios, but "disk read errors" when trying to boot to them. So I need to hook up these two new hd's in order to rebuild the array and save the data off of the old hd's (Using Runtime's GetDataBack Raid version).
Thanks
Full Version: SATA Raid and non-raid at same time?
Hey, I have a system very similar to that!
...did we get them during the same deal?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question. I may have an extra SATA cable or two lying around, but I don't have any extra SATA hard drives.
...did we get them during the same deal?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question. I may have an extra SATA cable or two lying around, but I don't have any extra SATA hard drives.
QUOTE (garsh @ 9-7-07, 2:13pm) 
Hey, I have a system very similar to that!
...did we get them during the same deal?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question. I may have an extra SATA cable or two lying around, but I don't have any extra SATA hard drives.
...did we get them during the same deal?
Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to your question. I may have an extra SATA cable or two lying around, but I don't have any extra SATA hard drives.
We sure did...I believe it was your find as well (thanks again). Good thing it had 3yr Gold technical support on it.
how is your raid configured? software raid or hardware raid? if it's software (something you can do inside Windows or your OS), you're pretty much free to do whatever you want.
if it's hardware raid, i think you should still be fine. i would go into the raid configuration menu (it should tell you to hit some key before the OS starts loading) and see if there's anything that restricts you from doing what you want. most RAID controllers can also act as IDE controllers. Since you already have an RAID-0 array (which can only be 2 drives), I don't see how adding an additional drive will somehow suck that into the array. Most likely, it'll just show up as a regular drive with the option to RAID-0 or RAID-1 if you have a 4th drive.
if it's hardware raid, i think you should still be fine. i would go into the raid configuration menu (it should tell you to hit some key before the OS starts loading) and see if there's anything that restricts you from doing what you want. most RAID controllers can also act as IDE controllers. Since you already have an RAID-0 array (which can only be 2 drives), I don't see how adding an additional drive will somehow suck that into the array. Most likely, it'll just show up as a regular drive with the option to RAID-0 or RAID-1 if you have a 4th drive.
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