How to disable the built-in RAID in x3650 M3

This is a constant problem with raid controllers. They normally don't provide any way to expose a drive without it being part of an array.

I've had loads of fun recently with a couple of lower end hostraid (adaptec) sata controllers on small servers. The array suddenly 'disappears'. You then cannot access the disk through the controller but both disks (mirror raid) are valid images.

Three solutions: 1) buy a low end controller to let you access the disk while attached to the system in question 2) Put the disk into an old server and copy the data accross 3) USB adapter which lets you see the disk as a usb disk.

With scsi disks I done 1 and 2 in the past. USB adaptors should exist out there.

Ian

Both of the RAID cards (8k or 8k-l) you are considering are able to configure the drive as a "Simple Volume". This is done in the ServeRaid Manager management software bundled with the server. documentation here

This simply exposes the drive as a single LUN. This approach is often used when recovering damaged RAID arrays for example. (However, see the comments below.)

It seems that these controllers however have only been updated to provide support for 2TB drives. There is no mention of 3TB device support in the most recent firmware update.