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Need help with Raid 1 disk failure.

XNine

XNine

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 7, 2005
3,154
0
Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
Ok, so, this is what's up. (BTW, Anyone posting any "OMGF GOD Windows 7 suxxors MAc OS EX FOREver" posts will get kicked in the nuts and told what a noob bitch they are.)

I have an Asus mobo, running Windows 7. I have two Western Digital 640 GB HDD's configured into a Raid 1 (redundant raid).

At boot, when the board detects the Raid it tells me that "A disk in the Raid Array has failed." Now, the machine still boots into Windows 7, albeit a little slower than usual (because it's having to check for all the data on two and keep going back to 1 disk to parse the data missing from the first).

I've ran Western Digitals utility to check each disk in the system, and each one checks out fine. Apparently this is BS, cos the Mobo obviously is telling me that 1 had failed.

My question is, how do I figure out which disk is bad and then how do I replace said disk without having to re-install Windows 7. (I want to avoid having to install all my games and programs).

Any help is much appreciated.
 
Asking for PC help on a Mac board and you threaten to kick people in the nuts if they post mac > PC


hmmm, yeah I want to help you ;)

I do suggest you post a question on the forum for the drive and/or motherboard. Is is possible the RAID controller went south and not the drive.
 
Since you're at RAID1, which is mirroring, you should have a mirrored set of whatever is on your primary disk. The easiest thing to do would be to break the RAID (in the BIOS), then unplug one drive from the controller and the PSU. Theoretically, you should be able to boot from the other drive. If it comes up fine, shut down the box again, unplug that drive from the SATA controller and PSU, then plug in the other drive. Start it up, and see what you get. Obviously, the other drive shouldn't come up, but if it does, no biggie. Shut it down again, plug in both drives, turn it on, and from whatever drive you feel is the safest, rebuild the RAID with that drive being the primary one. Otherwise, grab another 640GB, and rebuild the RAID with that.

Either way, with you going RAID 1, your data was protected.

BL.
 
bradl said:
Since you're at RAID1, which is mirroring, you should have a mirrored set of whatever is on your primary disk. The easiest thing to do would be to break the RAID (in the BIOS), then unplug one drive from the controller and the PSU. Theoretically, you should be able to boot from the other drive. If it comes up fine, shut down the box again, unplug that drive from the SATA controller and PSU, then plug in the other drive. Start it up, and see what you get. Obviously, the other drive shouldn't come up, but if it does, no biggie. Shut it down again, plug in both drives, turn it on, and from whatever drive you feel is the safest, rebuild the RAID with that drive being the primary one. Otherwise, grab another 640GB, and rebuild the RAID with that.

Either way, with you going RAID 1, your data was protected.

BL.
Click to expand...

Awesome! Thanks for your assistance! I'll try that and get back with any issues if I encounter any! :)
 
RITZFit said:
I'd take that a step further by pulling the battery and clearing the cmos. Atleast that would help rule out the possibility of a bad setting in the bios.
Click to expand...

Hrm, I think I'll try that before actually swapping the drives out. I found out that's it's the second drive in the array that's not being recognized. However, when hitting CTRL+F at the RAID screen during boot, I don't get any Rebuild selection. I get 1-4. In the "Promise" manual it says there's a 5th selection to rebuild, however, not on my screen. Kinda weirded out by that. I'm going to also try and verify the disk using Acronis boot disc and see where that gets me.

jav6454 said:
I am just curious. Which Asus Mobo?
Click to expand...
M3A78-EM. It's a little old at this point, but it's a packed full of features for a being MicroATX. Even has onboard HDMI. Pretty sweet lil board for a first-build. I'll be moving to MSI with my next board to support an AM3 processor.
 
XNine said:
M3A78-EM. It's a little old at this point, but it's a packed full of features for a being MicroATX. Even has onboard HDMI. Pretty sweet lil board for a first-build. I'll be moving to MSI with my next board to support an AM3 processor.
Click to expand...

What about Intel? Given up on them? Wouldn't a Micro-ATX board from Asus do the trick again?
 
jav6454 said:
What about Intel? Given up on them? Wouldn't a Micro-ATX board from Asus do the trick again?
Click to expand...

Intel price for performance doesn't beat AMD. Sorry, but I'm not willing to spend an additional 20-40% for the performance ratio. My AM2+ processor is still running great. And Asus is alright, but I like MSI's bios and features quite a bit more, plus MicroATX doesn't give me the option for crossfire as very few boards come with 2 PCIE slots. A full ATX board will be in my future because of that.
 
maflynn said:
Asking for PC help on a Mac board and you threaten to kick people in the nuts if they post mac > PC


hmmm, yeah I want to help you ;)

I do suggest you post a question on the forum for the drive and/or motherboard. Is is possible the RAID controller went south and not the drive.
Click to expand...

well he has a point. Any mac users who would post that just would prove how stupid they are and add to the illusion that Apple fans are idiots because this is a hardware issue not a OS issue.

In laymans terms same issue would effect macs as the problem is either in a Hard drive failure or a Mobo issue. both completely unrelated to the OS.
 
XNine said:
Intel price for performance doesn't beat AMD. Sorry, but I'm not willing to spend an additional 20-40% for the performance ratio. My AM2+ processor is still running great. And Asus is alright, but I like MSI's bios and features quite a bit more, plus MicroATX doesn't give me the option for crossfire as very few boards come with 2 PCIE slots. A full ATX board will be in my future because of that.
Click to expand...

I can see that.
 
Rodimus Prime said:
well he has a point. Any mac users who would post that just would prove how stupid they are and add to the illusion that Apple fans are idiots because this is a hardware issue not a OS issue.

In laymans terms same issue would effect macs as the problem is either in a Hard drive failure or a Mobo issue. both completely unrelated to the OS.
Click to expand...

Bingo.

I have a Mac as well, but I have a gaming rig and the gaming rig is the one with an issue. To be more precise on why I asked for help in this forum is because I'm not a part of ANY PC forums, simply because enough Mac users have experience with multiple platforms (OS X, Linux, Windows) that their knowledge is more than enough for me to look here for suggestions, which is why and what I did.
 
XNine said:
Bingo.

I have a Mac as well, but I have a gaming rig and the gaming rig is the one with an issue. To be more precise on why I asked for help in this forum is because I'm not a part of ANY PC forums, simply because enough Mac users have experience with multiple platforms (OS X, Linux, Windows) that their knowledge is more than enough for me to look here for suggestions, which is why and what I did.
Click to expand...

And hence you got your response. I am astonished some users go with the "I don't know ask the maker" type response.

He clearly isn't seeking help from them first. He came to us. First line of defense, the users. Some one was nice enough to post a response, which in my opinion is the best one thus far.

On a on-topic note. Why not choose RAID 5? I mean, all you would need is buy an extra HDD. You would have RAID 0's speed and RAID 1 mirroring.
 
UPDATE: So, I found out that the RAID Controller on SB700 series chipsets can go absolutely ****ing crazy for no reason at all. The RAID will start to fail, at which the HDD will become a JBOD instead of part of the ARRAY. I downloaded AMD's RAIDXTREME utility and it was able to rebuild the array within my browser. Took two hours to rebuild and verify. But according to the utility, its status is now Healthy and no longer Critical. I haven't tried a restart yet.

Not to mention that the Promise Fast Track RAID controller for this chipset is a piece of **** anyway, doesn't even have a rebuild option. So this utility has helped, hopefully.


jav6454 said:
On a on-topic note. Why not choose RAID 5? I mean, all you would need is buy an extra HDD. You would have RAID 0's speed and RAID 1 mirroring.
Click to expand...

The problem is I have 4 HDD's in the case as it is now. Being that it's an ANTEC 300 and the mobo is a micro-ATX, I don't have any more room for a a RAID 5. Two drives for the RAID array and 2 for backup/movies/files/etc. The only thing I keep on my RAID is the OS and Steam for my games.
 
XNine said:
UPDATE: So, I found out that the RAID Controller on SB700 series chipsets can go absolutely ****ing crazy for no reason at all. The RAID will start to fail, at which the HDD will become a JBOD instead of part of the ARRAY. I downloaded AMD's RAIDXTREME utility and it was able to rebuild the array within my browser. Took two hours to rebuild and verify. But according to the utility, its status is now Healthy and no longer Critical. I haven't tried a restart yet.

Not to mention that the Promise Fast Track RAID controller for this chipset is a piece of **** anyway, doesn't even have a rebuild option. So this utility has helped, hopefully.
Click to expand...

Dam, that's a whole mess you got there. I hope your mobo doesn't decide to throw another fit. RAID arrays can be a pain to rebuild.

XNine said:
The problem is I have 4 HDD's in the case as it is now. Being that it's an ANTEC 300 and the mobo is a micro-ATX, I don't have any more room for a a RAID 5. Two drives for the RAID array and 2 for backup/movies/files/etc. The only thing I keep on my RAID is the OS and Steam for my games.
Click to expand...

Ah I see! Can't you redirect one of those drives towards the array or are they too full to be switched over?
 
jav6454 said:
Dam, that's a whole mess you got there. I hope your mobo doesn't decide to throw another fit. RAID arrays can be a pain to rebuild.

Ah I see! Can't you redirect one of those drives towards the array or are they too full to be switched over?
Click to expand...

I hear the MSI boards are much better than Gigabyte and Asus as far as RAIDs go. Hence why I'll be moving to MSI soon. What a pain thsi has been.

I can't. The RAID is set up as a redundant 640GB RAID 1. The other drives are a 320GB and a 240 GB, respectively. This would drop the RAID down to 320 or 240 GB respectively.

I could always buy another 640GB HDD, but I'll wait. Right now I'm looking at getting either the Lian-LI PC-X500B or the PC-x2000 case. Not sure which yet, but they're both SO damn sexy!
 
XNine said:
I hear the MSI boards are much better than Gigabyte and Asus as far as RAIDs go. Hence why I'll be moving to MSI soon. What a pain thsi has been.

I can't. The RAID is set up as a redundant 640GB RAID 1. The other drives are a 320GB and a 240 GB, respectively. This would drop the RAID down to 320 or 240 GB respectively.

I could always buy another 640GB HDD, but I'll wait. Right now I'm looking at getting either the Lian-LI PC-X500B or the PC-x2000 case. Not sure which yet, but they're both SO damn sexy!
Click to expand...

Corsair 800D! Sexier! Also, might I suggest the Samsung RAID F1 drives. They are RAID certified and don't cost arm and leg. Check this one out: Linky

They have more capacities like: 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB
 
jav6454 said:
Corsair 800D! Sexier! Also, might I suggest the Samsung RAID F1 drives. They are RAID certified and don't cost arm and leg. Check this one out: Linky

They have more capacities like: 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB
Click to expand...

While the Corsair is nice, the Lian-li is very minimalistic in it's exterior (much like the old G3/G4 Powermacs) and even has options for Doors for the drivebays to keep a clean look. Though the Lian-li PC-x2000 and PC-x500B are very expensive, the overall design is more appealing not just aesthetically but performance wise. Trust me, the Corsair 800D and the Cosmos 1000 were also in my choices, but I've fallen in love with the Lian-Li. I might even ask her to marry me. :D

Aaaaah newegg, my home away from home. I'll check them out. Thanks for the link. :)
 
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