Help taking out HDD from RAID

I suggest you not use RAID at all.

RAID 0 is misleading, because there is no redundancy at all. If you lose one drive in a RAID 0 setup, then you lose all your data because part of every file is stored on every drive. Do NOT use RAID 0 unless you really know what you are doing, AND you have a complete backup system in place.

Also, I'm not entirely clear on what you have in the way of drives. Do you have a 64GB SSD, a 320GGB hard drive, and a 640GB hard drive?

One option is to use the new ability of Z68 to provide SSD caching of your main drive. Install Windows on the 320GB hard drive, then connect the SSD, and use the Intel software to configure things so the 64GB SSD caches the 320GB. There is some dispute over whether this is the best use of the SSD, though - you might want to search out the reviews and tests of this feature (there's a review here on Tom's Hardware that covers this).

Oh, and to answer your last question, no, RAID should not automatically include all the drives on your PC. In fact, RAID normally expects all the drives to be the same size, so I'm confused when you say you have a 64GB and a 320GB drive in RAID.

Did you format/partition the drive before trying to use it?

Ok maybe I should explain it better, I am taking advantage of SSD chaching, the OS is installed in the 320GB and the and the 64GB is being used as cache. I am not sure if that counts as a RAID but the instructions said to set my SATA settings to RAID.

I was able to plug my 640GB to a SATA port on the Marvell controller and it is now recognized properly, so the problem is solved for now, but what if I need to add more drives? Can I add them to the Intel Sata ports and they without them being automatically added to the RAID that includes the SSD and the OS drive?

The quick answer to "Can I add them to the Intel Sata ports and they without them being automatically added to the RAID that includes the SSD and the OS drive?" is "Yes."

Here comes the long answer. The drive controllers can be set to three modes in the BIOS: Legacy IDE, AHCI, and RAID. With single drives, AHCI mode and RAID mode are identical. Having RAID mode set allows you to _build_ RAID volumes in the BIOS, binding together multiple drives of the same size to build redundant and/or larger storage.

If you don't deliberately build a RAID volume, you don't have one. Dedicating a small SSD to caching with the Z-series motherboards is a separate issue entirely; the system will use the SSD as a cache for the most frequently used data. Since this is usually the OS and application code, these are what are usually cached. If you spent all day listening to "Never Gonna Give You Up" over and over again, it would probably be cached too.

Edit: 64 GB is getting to the size where you could use it as a boot disk instead. Just don't use the caching feature of the Z68 chipset at all. Intel intended this to be useful for people who could not afford large-enough SSDs for a complete OS and software install.

Best answer selected by leamsi4ever.