Help with raid setup

[Nazarah24]

hey folks, i have an old Dell Latitude E6520 laptop that supports raid and i'm trying to set up raid 1 on. I've updated the bios (A21) and changed the sata operation mode to raid in the bios. However the only option i get in the raid setup boot screen is "recovery" i've also tried to set it up in windows in intel rts but i get the same there anyone know why i'm not getting any other options, appreciate any help cheers.

[Oshino Shinobu]

What drives are you using in the laptop?

[Nazarah24]

2 kingston UV500 2.5 250gb ssd's

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

3 minutes ago, Nazarah24 said:

2 kingston UV500 2.5 250gb ssd's

 

It seems like there should be a SATA mode called RAID On in the BIOS. Can you see that? 

 

When booting, you'll get the RAID splash screen/menu where you can press Ctrl+I to enter it. Do you see both drives there or just the one? 

[Nazarah24]

yeah raid in enabled in the bios and in the raid splash screen it see's both drives i just can make any raid other than "recovery"

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Nazarah24 said:

yeah raid in enabled in the bios and in the raid splash screen it see's both drives i just can make any raid other than "recovery"

 

Strange. You could always set it up in Windows Disk Management. As it's RAID 1, you should still be able to boot from it when it's software RAID. Won't tie you to the board either. 

[Nazarah24]

true but i want to dual boot linux as well

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Nazarah24 said:

true but i want to dual boot linux as well

Not sure on that then. If the drives are showing on the initial RAID menu, they should be available to add to an array. 

 

I've not come across it only showing recovery before. Maybe try going though the recovery mode to see if options come after after going through it. 

[Nazarah24]

its not so much a"recover your data"mode as it is a setup to have one drive a "master" and the other a "slave" drive for redundancy but you don't get any read performance as you would with an actual raid 1

[Nazarah24]

i tried my luck with dell support and they said since it's a out of warranty product they can't offer free support,so basically pony up if you want help lol

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Nazarah24 said:

i tried my luck with dell support and they said since it's a out of warranty product they can't offer free support,so basically pony up if you want help lol

Pretty standard for tech support, even if it's just a question

 

Having a redundancy drive may be the best you can get out of it. Worth testing to see if striped reads works with it or not. They may just not call it RAID 1. 

[Nazarah24]

not a bad idea 1 way to find out haha

[Nazarah24]

i have a similar setup on a desktop with the same drives in raid 1 so when its finished if its just a name change but actually raid 1 it should look like this

[Nazarah24]

if it doesn't work as well i'll try software raid and if that works out i'll make 2 partitions on each drive and have software raid for each os bit of a pain but looks like my only option

[Nazarah24]

so i gave up after the linux install had issues with the other partitions and just imaged the windows install and formatted everything then installed linux using software raid 1. I don't need dual boot it was just to make it easier if i wanted to switch back at some point but if i ever need to switch back it will be because i no longer need the linux os so shouldn't be a problem wiping then. Thanks for the help though