OK guys so it seems I will never be able to get six matching hard drives, so RAID is out of the question. However, I did have a question. I'm running an Adaptec 2610SA or something.. Is it possible to just use it as an add in card that allows me to use a few odd drives for putting OSes on? IE - disable the RAID part and just use it as a bootable add in card? What setting would I need to use in the card's bios? Basically I have used up all five of the ports on my board (XP, Vista, 7, 8 and a 500gb storage drive) so wanted to add more so I can put on Steam OS Linux etc (possibly even MAC OS if my PC is hackintosh worthy).
You don't necessarily need "matching" hard drives for RAID - drives of the same size and similar performance capabilities will do the job just as well. Many cards will let you use very different drives too, but use the lowest common denominator to equalise them (size or performance).
Adaptec OEM product... Well, good luck finding info about them (hell, even Adaptec sends you to HP & Dell sites). In my experience, Adaptec has pretty much two different sets of cards : - "HostRAID" cards - these can act as simple HBA. I had 1430SA from this category. - real "hardware RAID cards" - these can't act as simple HBA (at least not my Adaptec 2405). Instead you need to create a single drive JBOD for each drive, so in case of 6 drives you need to create 6 JBOD arrays (yes, it is as retarded as it sounds). Also, it seems the card you talk about is 2TB limited ? I would recommend getting something like IBM M1015 or LSI 9211-8i (pretty much the same thing; flash the M1015 to 9211-8i firmware in case) plus mSAS->4xSATA cables. Sure, it will cost you ~$130-$150 (from eBay), but it is very future proof - it is SATA3, supports 3TB and bigger drives.
To use a RAID card without using the actual RAID options, it needs to support JBOD (an abbreviation of "Just A Bunch of Disks"). However, if your card is an Adaptec 2610SA then you may struggle for driver support: https://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/raid/sata/aar-2410sa/. The Adaptec 2610SA was apparently an OEM only product produced for HP & Dell. HP: http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/si...ac.admitted=1395919236303.876444892.492883150 Dell: http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=cerc+sata+1.5/6ch&cat=sup&ref=ac However, I did come across this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/261735-32-raid-setup-dell-cerc-2610sa-adaptec I've also seen reference on t'internet to a 2TB partition limit on those cards. Quickest way would be to plug it in to a Windows 7 or 8 box and see if it is detected. If it is, you *may* get lucky trying to find a driver for it depending on the O/S flavour, if it is not detected then you are out of luck.
You certainly can use drives singularly... ...though i'm slightly hampered as i've not used an adaptec card in years - so this isn't working knowledge. 1. if you're using the bios menu thing, then it 'may' be the case that there's an express setup - if there is, it'll operate roughly equivalently to 2 below. if there's not, the main setting is to make each drive a simple volume... ...&, whilst the manual's not clear on it at all, my assumption is (based on my lsi card & that it'd be too confusing if cards from alt manufacturers had to be setup completely differently) that you set it as R0. Naturally, you then need to initialise the drive(s), as you would an array, so you'll lose any data on it. 2. The alt is to use the create -> express setup option in the Adaptec Storage Manager s/w - as it's one of the 3 things it can do. if you've more than 1 unconfigured drive attached you'd then click the 'modify logical devices' button & exclude all but the drive that you want... ...& then click apply. (using ASM, it should initialise the drive for you - not sure about it if there's an express setup in the bios thing)
I don't want to raid as the smallest disc is 8gb lol. I'm not concerned about drivers guys I have it working in everything but Vista (so XP 8 and 7). I know there are Linux drivers for it because Dell have them on their site...
Obviously i wasn't talking about using drives in raid... ...the reference to R0 was simply that it's the way to use a drive singularly on my lsi card, & looking at the options that appear to have to be selected in the manual then you have to choose a raid level if you're doing a custom (not express) setup.
on hp cards to get a disk to be a single disk you have to stick it in as a single disk R0 array, otherwise you can't make a volume on it - so I second what PD says.
Yes I seem to recall I had to make an array, even though I was only using one disk.. So basically I make an array, pick one disk, set it up.. Then make another array yes?
Morning all. So I went into the card's bios and built two RAID 0 arrays separately. I go into Windows 8 and they show in drive management.. But I can't quick format them, it just keeps saying they can not be formatted.. I've unchecked quick format and the 160gb is formatting hella slow.. I had this issue with the 8gb last week but managed to figure it out in the end, but I can't for the life of me remember what I did lol.. Any tips?
Update. I can't format either disk. I'm currently in the Adaptec bios verifying each disk. Hopefully then Windows will allow me to work with them
OK verified each disk, still can not format either. Not even breaking them down and using diskpart. Very frustrating !!
Ah you confident that the card's not still initialising them? Well, whilst i know that, with my lsi card, a quick initialisation will take not real time at all, even with 300GB 15K7 SAS drives then a full initialisation takes far longer... ...so as you're using both significantly slower drives & controller...(?) in the Windows interface for the card, i believe there's a swirly magnifying glass (or something similar) that shows that it's initialising when you set an array up. The other immediate thoughts are whether, in drive management, you've right clicked & initialised the drives...? ...& that you've done obvious things like install the latest f/w & drivers. Probably grandmothers & eggs, but worth a mention.
I've tried everything now. Both disks show up in management (win 7 and win 8) both can be partitioned to RAW, neither can be formatted. It's very very odd.
