Removing RAID on a DELL power-edge server

Question

We have a Dell Power-edge T110 server, with either a PERC S100 or S300 raid controller (I suspect S100), and 2 x 500GB SATA hard discs.

These discs are running in RAID-1 configuration, (either 1 or 2 virtual discs), and on top of this, we have the C and D drives.

As we are running low on disc space, we are looking at dropping the RAID to get some disc space back.

Is it possible to split the discs back into 2 seperate hards discs that the OS can see, without losing all the data on the drives? Even better, would it be possible to split the D: drive, leaving the OS C: drive in RAID1 configuration?

Solution

You can't break the RAID array without losing the data. If I'm not mistaken you can set the raid controller from RAID mode to SCSI mode which will leave you with two independent disks, but you'll lose the data in the process. Also, since you only have two disks it's not possible to create a RAID array only for the C: drive.

Comments

[Michal Sokolowski]

That's not true, you can brake RAID 1 without data loss, it'll be perfectly recoverable. Moreover, the file system should work in another computer. It depends where meta data are, in most cases I've seen the place of boot sector, partition table in RAID 1 are preserved.