How do I uninstall RAID 0 from Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard?

Hi folks,

I recently bought a new PC with an Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, Intel
Core 2 Quad Q6600, and two SAMSUNG HD501LJ 500GB hard drives set up in
a RAID 0 (STRIPE) configuration, producing a single 931.52GB bootable
volume. In Windows XP it shows as a single partition: drive C; I have
no other hard drives or partitions on the system. Yet.

What I'd like to do is uninstall the RAID 0 configuration and return
the drives to two separate 500GB (realistically 465GB) drives. Once I
get the separate drives back I'm very familiar with partitioning
drives and reinstalling Windows XP so I'm okay with that part of the
operation.

But I'm not 100% sure how to uninstall the RAID 0 config, and this is
the first time that I've had SATA drives and so I'm doing some
homework before I attempt anything. I'd really appreciate your
advice.


=== RAID SETUP ===

When the PC boots, after the initial POST and invitation to press Del
to get into the BIOS, I'm presented with the option to press F10 to
enter the RAID setup utility. If I do this I see the following
information:

-------------------------------------------------------
MediaSheild Utility May 22 2006
- Array List -

Boot: Yes
Status: Healthy
Vendor: NVIDIA
Array: STRIPE
Model Name: 931.52G
-------------------------------------------------------

The options here are [Ctrl-X] Exit, [Up/Down] Select, [B] Set Boot,
[ENTER] Detail. If I click on Enter to get details I see the following
information:

-------------------------------------------------------
Array 1 : NVIDIA STRIPE 931.52G
- Array Detail -

RAID Mode: Striping
Striping Width: 2
Striping Block: 64K

Port: 2
Index: 0
Disk Model
SAMSUNG HD501LJ
Capacity: 465.76GB

Port: 3
Index: 1
Disk Model
SAMSUNG HD501LJ
Capacity: 465.76GB
-------------------------------------------------------

Here I have the options for [D] Delete, [C] Clear Disk, [ENTER]
Return.


=== IS THIS WHAT I DO? ===

Could someone/folks please confirm whether the following is the right
process, or please correct my assumptions.

What I'm presuming that I have to do is:

1. Boot PC
2. Enter the RAID setup
3. Select the only volume there and press [ENTER] to get details
4. Select [D] to Delete the current RAID configuration
5. Exit RAID setup
6. Reboot PC with Windows XP CD-ROM in drive
7. Create new partitions and format them
8. Install XP

Is that correct? Or are there any additional steps that I need to
take in the BIOS (Phoenix AwardBIOS). Also could someone please
confirm whether I will also need to install (reinstall?) the RAID
driver from floppy after step 5 (between deleting the RAID config and
rebooting with the XP CD-ROM in) -- I'm not sure here whether the RAID
drivers are simply for RAID only or whether they also include AHCI
drivers needed to optimize the SATA drives.

I'd really appreciate your input. I hope I've given you enough
detail. Like I said, I'm very familiar with a lot of areas of setting
up PCs, but this is my first encounter with SATA and RAID. I bought
my last PC in 2003 and it simply came with a 120GB IDE HDD.

Thanks in advance,

Gareth J M Saunders
Anstruther, UK

Thanks Paul, that's really helpful, as is the manual download --
exactly what I needed.

Thanks again,

Gareth

> According to the latest Mediashield manual,
>
> "Clear the MBR (press C, then press Y at the prompt).
> Delete the array (press D, then press Y at the prompt)."
>
> "What does "Clear Disk" mean in the RAID ROM Setup?
>
> Clear Disk clears the MBR (Master Boot Record). This is needed to prevent
> invalid data from appearing in the MBR space on any of the drives included
> in the array. Not doing so could render the system unstable."
>
> http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/nForce/9.46/NVMediaShield_UGv6.pdf
>
> So that at least suggests the time to test the command, should not
> be too long.
>
> Paul