Were my HDDs originally in a RAID array?

[Dr. Prop]

I have an old tower pc that was bought prebuilt in 2008. I used it for 5 years until its graphics card broke and I got a new computer. It has 2 500GB HDDs that were each connected directly to the motherboard by SATA connections. As far as I can tell, there is no RAID card in the machine. I am ignorant of whether or not the motherboard could have RAID capabilities of its own. I do not remember seeing two separate volumes on the old machine, but I also wouldn't have known enough at the time to look for a second 500GB HDD. Finally, I also do not remember the total capacity I had on the machine.

 

I removed the 2 500GB HDDs from an old tower computer of mine and connected them to my new pc. These drives show up as "unallocated" in disk management. How can I know for sure if these drives were in a RAID array previously, and how would this impact my current ability to read them?

[Crunchy Dragon]

What motherboard? I think right around then was when motherboard manufacturers started integrating RAID support, but I'm not 100% sure.

My Gigabyte A68HM-DS2H has RAID 0,1,5 support and that's a fairly old board with the FM2+ socket.

 

As you may or may not know, RAID 0 will use both drives as if they were one drive, and as far as I know will affect your ability to read the drives if they are removed from the RAID 0 array and not formatted.

[Dr. Prop]

23 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

What motherboard? I think right around then was when motherboard manufacturers started integrating RAID support, but I'm not 100% sure.

My Gigabyte A68HM-DS2H has RAID 0,1,5 support and that's a fairly old board with the FM2+ socket.

 

As you may or may not know, RAID 0 will use both drives as if they were one drive, and as far as I know will affect your ability to read the drives if they are removed from the RAID 0 array and not formatted.

Im trying to find the manufacturer, cut so far, all I can tell you is that the computer was a HP Pavilion Elite d5100t ATX CTO Desktop PC. I will let you know if I uncover more details. The motherboard itself is yellow, and has no branding on it that I have found.

[STRESSMASTER]

if it was in a mirrored array you should be able to read both drives only any system and all files should be the same. if you run a drive in another system and don't see anything than it was in raid 0 which combined the 2 drives raid one put same files on both and u would not have raid 5 as u need 3 or more drives

[Dr. Prop]

31 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

What motherboard? I think right around then was when motherboard manufacturers started integrating RAID support, but I'm not 100% sure.

My Gigabyte A68HM-DS2H has RAID 0,1,5 support and that's a fairly old board with the FM2+ socket.

 

As you may or may not know, RAID 0 will use both drives as if they were one drive, and as far as I know will affect your ability to read the drives if they are removed from the RAID 0 array and not formatted.

@Crunchy Dragon I found it: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01640562 Unfortunately, this page says it is possible for my computer to have either 1 TB (2 x 500 GB) 7200 rpm SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec) or 2 x 500 GB drives in RAID 1 (500 GB usable storage capacity), 7200 rpm, SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec), LED adapter cable. In short, it is possible that my drives were either in a raid array, or not. If they were not in a RAID array, is there software for Windows that would be able to read them? 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Erwins Kitten said:

@Crunchy Dragon I found it: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01640562 Unfortunately, this page says it is possible for my computer to have either 1 TB (2 x 500 GB) 7200 rpm SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec) or 2 x 500 GB drives in RAID 1 (500 GB usable storage capacity), 7200 rpm, SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec), LED adapter cable. In short, it is possible that my drives were either in a raid array, or not. If they were not in a RAID array, is there software for Windows that would be able to read them? 

If you don't care about the data on them, I would personally try to format them in Disk Management.

 

I'm not aware of any software that will be able to read drives, although it is possible that it exists.

[Dr. Prop]

32 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

If you don't care about the data on them, I would personally try to format them in Disk Management.

I'm probably going to do that. My investigations thus far have been to see if the data is recoverable, but it's more trouble than it's worth at this point and I need the storage. Thanks for the help.