Hi

I have a T5500

The hard drive it has in there is a Western Digital Enterprise Hard Drive WD1002FBYS    It is an  RE(Raid Edition) drive.

I understand that Enterprise Hard Drives particularly  RE ones, have this about them

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/241483-32-western-digital

wdc.custhelp.com/.../L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xNDM1NzU5NDcxL3NpZC9mUlVzUWdxbQ%3D%3D

"If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses. 

When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue. Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array. Most RAID controllers allow from 7 to 15 seconds for error recovery before dropping a hard drive from an array. Western Digital does not recommend installing desktop edition hard drives in an enterprise environment (on a RAID controller).

Western Digital RAID edition hard drives have a feature called TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery) which stops the hard drive from entering into a deep recovery cycle. The hard drive will only spend 7 seconds to attempt to recover. This means that the hard drive will not be dropped from a RAID array. 

If you install a RAID edition hard drive in a desktop computer, the computer system may report more errors than a normal desktop hard drive (due to the TLER feature). Western Digital does not recommend installing RAID edition hard drives into a desktop computer environment. "

And here, a WD rep says similar..

forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php;t=16357&start=30#p97408

So my question there is,  is my WD Enterprise drive connecting to a RAID controller? And if I want to install a second and even third hard drive, should I then look for another Enterprise drive?

Is there any setting in the BIOS for RAID that I should be turning on/off?  I don't plan to use RAID  It's possible in future I might use JBOD.. I guess my hard drive is plugged into a RAID controller? If it's plugged into SATA 0 would that be a RAID controller?

The PDF manual www.levnapc.cz/.../dell-precision-t5500-servisni-manual-en.pdf

mentions 5 SATA connectors SATA 0-4    Are they all RAID?  In which case my hard drive is plugged into a RAID connector.

Given the thing from the western digital site, i'm not that sure about plugging a WD drive that isn't enterprise, into the computer as a second drive. Or perhaps another make of drive not designed for RAID. And even if  I am not using RAID, it's still perhaps a RAID controller. One could say "oh it's fine" but then what of what the WD site said?

And are there any BIOS settings that make any difference to this?