I have a Windows Server 2012 storage box which has 4 drive slots (not counting the internal OS drive). The system tray shows a Western Digital RAID utility, where you can perform various RAID operations. I’m assuming this is a hardware RAID implementation.
When I put in 2 new drives, I set them up as RAID 1. However I did this using DISKMGMT. Am I correct this is a “software” RAID implementation? Because when I pop out the 1st drive, the DATA volume disappears in explorer. From my research it appears that some software RAID drives aren’t hot swappable, which would explain this behavior.
I’m in the process of copying my data over to a backup drive because I would like to break the software RAID and start over with the WD hardware RAID. My question at this point is, how does one actually break a Windows software raid? I couldn’t find anything in DISKMGT that seems to indicate that you can do this.
ETA: I don’t see an option for “break mirror”, so I’ve added a screenshot
Disk 2, E:. Perhaps I didn’t create the software RAID properly in the first place, but the disk doesn’t appear in DISKMGMT. There are 4 disks in the machine: 0 (OS) 1 (not showing up) 2 (storage space) 3 (New Volume). Here is what the WD utility shows.WD Utility
Best Answer
Yes this is software raid. Windows uses drivers installed for the drives and doesn't support hot swap. To break the raid to into disk management, right click the volume and select