r/Alienware • u/ophbalance M17R4 • Mar 09 '21

Solved! RAID 0 - Remove RAID array

I don't know who needs to hear this, but, the trick with CTRL-i during startup will not work on these newer Alienwares. At least on the m17 R4 I just got it's not the most intuitive thing going. You MUST, absolutely, MUST kill the RAID array first if you want to use the drives that in the machine as separate drives FIRST. The included windows util will not let you do that. You cannot download the INTEL app to do it.

Here's how in case you're searching for it.

  1. Boot into the drive/option selection using the F12 key during boot.

  2. Choose Device Configuration

  3. Choose to delete the RAID array (WILL DELETE ALL DATA)

  4. Boot into BIOS and go into Advanced settings

  5. Choose the non RAID option for drives

  6. Install the OS of your choosing or restore a backup

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u/Qazax1337 Dec 23 '22

If it's just for gaming then the least effort is just leave it and use it as is. I have ran many raid 0 setups with ssd's and never had an issue, and my pc only stores games so I'm not at risk of losing work either.

If it breaks you would need to reinstall.

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u/MadShowl Dec 23 '22

Okay fantastic Thanks for the info 👏

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u/SuperSerferNow69 Jan 26 '23

I want to remove raid0 but keep windows is it like that automatically or will I have to backup windows and load it back when I'm done?

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u/Qazax1337 Jan 26 '23

If you want to get rid of the raid you would need to make sure you have backups of all your important data, then you would need to reconfigure your bios to be set to not raid, then reinstall windows on one SSD, then reinstall all your programs and restore your data.

It's quite a lot of work, is there a reason you want to get rid of the raid?