2 Samsung 1TB SSD's as RAID 1 . Keep getting "Critical Error R/W" message then...

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

I have recently had a system set up using AMD Raid (on the Motherboard) with Windows 10. I have 2 X Samsung SSD 1 TB but am having "problems" in that when booting up computer I always get message saying "Array is Critical etc etc" .It then continues to Boot into Windows 10 fine and runs ok. THEN if I restart and go into RAID Bios" I see that 1 disk is listed as "Online and other as "hot spare" both in green letters (I set the 2nd drive up as hot spare. Anyway to all intents it is RAID 1 and has 2 SDD's . Then I come out of Raid Bios and continue onwards to windows 10. THEN if I wait maybe 15 mins to 1 hour and then restart (NOT shutdown and reboot, simply restart) then the messages often changes back to "Normal" during booting and into Windows 10. THEN if I shutdown the computer (NOT having done any real work on computer) and reboot, it then reverts Back to "This array is Critical" . MAYBE it is saying "Critical" because it is RAID 1 and at THAT time it does not have a full mirror on 2nd disk and takes 1/2 to catch up ?. Just wondering WHY shutting down and rebooting (versus simply restarting from on) switches it always back to Critical ?. . Its like everytime I reboot it needs to complete the Mirror again ?. (Both disks show as being in the same Array (RAID 1) even though one is marked as "Hot Spare. I have previously scanned BOTH disks and seem ok . I then "Initialized" the 2nd Drive and got it right in that it was Disk 1 that holds the OS . Then made it a global hot spare and that made the RAID 1 ) How long would it take to complete a Mirror again,as I guess it may be rebuilding although doesn't tell me that.

Any ideas appreciated.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Please provide your hardware specs.

You should not set any drive to hot spare in a 2 drive RAID 1

 

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

Please provide your hardware specs.

You should not set any drive to hot spare in a 2 drive RAID 1

2nd point first. To be perfectly honest I did not know how to "attach" the 2nd drive TO the 1st to complete
the Raid 1 . I only have 2 drives. Maybe you can tell me how to correct that without losing the OS ?.

The computer specs;

Corsair CX650 650W 80+ Bronze PSU
Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L RGB All-In-One Liquid CPU
Cooler
ASUS PCE-AC68 1900Mbps PCI Express WiFi Adapter
MSI B450 TOMAHAWK AMD Socket AM4 Motherboard
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro - 64-Bit DVD (OEM)
Corsair Obsidian 750D Full Tower Case
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2GHz Octa Core (Socket AM4) CPU
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Graphics Card
HyperX Predator 64GB (4x 16GB) 3000MHz DDR4 RAM
2 X Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5" SATA III SSD's
DVD Writer Optical Drive

Raid is set up on AMD Motherboard


Thanks for your attention.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You should not set any drive to hot spare in a 2 drive RAID 1

This. Makes no sense. A Mirror RAID, with no mirror drive, but a "Hot Spare"?

I'm of the opinion that there is no point to RAID-1 (mirroring) with SSDs. Either go full-monte RAID-0 for performance, or don't RAID at all. And MAKE SURE TO HAVE BACKUPS. If you can afford dual SSDs, you can afford a NAS, and a copy of Macrium Reflect (Free), to schedule daily backups.

 

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

This. Makes no sense. A Mirror RAID, with no mirror drive, but a "Hot Spare"?

I'm of the opinion that there is no point to RAID-1 (mirroring) with SSDs. Either go full-monte RAID-0 for performance, or don't RAID at all. And MAKE SURE TO HAVE BACKUPS. If you can afford dual SSDs, you can afford a NAS, and a copy of Macrium Reflect (Free), to schedule daily backups.

When the system was first built it had 3 drives in it, 2 SSD's and 1 HD. For some reason in the RAID Bios it showed the HD as an SSD . Anyway I took out the HD and left the 2 SSD's in there I did so partly because I didn't know which drives the guy had used as the Raid or even if it was Raid 1 ,and mostly because I was getting the "Critical Error" message. I then made educated guess and "initialized" the 2nd Drive in RAID Bios and (since I didnt know really how to join it to the Disk 1 and make the Raid 1 complete) I set as Global Hot Spare).


I definitely still do want a proper working RAID 1 and also I always do keep backups and clones of the drive as well.

Thanks

 

[ch33zw1z]

OP: If you had the operating system installed prior creating the array, them you may or may not be able to convert the OS disk to a RAID drive without a reinstall

Here's the support site link

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B450-TOMAHAWK

Make sure you're at the latest bios, then grab the latest array drivers and get them extracted onto a flash drive.

Get the manual, and start at page 84, verify the RAID config is what you want.

You can try to boot the OS, but to convert the install to run on a RAID set, you may have repair or reload the OS and point the install at the driver's on the flash drive

 

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

or creating the array, them you may or may not be able to convert the OS disk to a RAID drive without a reinstall

Thanks . The 1st Disk is the one with OS on and definitely IS a RAID Drive . Its Disk 2 I need to join to that Disk 1 ,as Disk 2 is the one I re initialized to see if could shake off the critical message and also to do scan of SSD for errors (got clean report).

So as far as the OS is ,it is ok on RAID Disk 1 . Just need to work out HOW (without setting as global hot spare) the 2nd Disk to that one.

Thanks for your time

 

[ch33zw1z]

Thanks . The 1st Disk is the one with OS on and definitely IS a RAID Drive . Its Disk 2 I need to join to that Disk 1 ,as Disk 2 is the one I re initialized to see if could shake off the critical message and also to do scan of SSD for errors (got clean report).

So as far as the OS is ,it is ok on RAID Disk 1 . Just need to work out HOW (without setting as global hot spare) the 2nd Disk to that one.

Thanks for your time

I forgot to add, backup any critical information before trying anything.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would back up whatever you can / want to save, onto an external HDD, and then wipe (using DISKPART's CLEAN ALL functionality), all of the drives, while set to non-RAID mode in the BIOS (thus allowing to write over the RAID meta-data using the CLEAN command), using a Win10 boot USB, then plug in the drives that you want to use for RAID, set up the RAID functionality in BIOS, create the array, install the OS, including with the RAID drivers on a USB stick (a second one), and then when the OS was installed, plug in any additional data drives and set them up.

 

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

I would back up whatever you can / want to save, onto an external HDD, and then wipe (using DISKPART's CLEAN ALL functionality), all of the drives, while set to non-RAID mode in the BIOS (thus allowing to write over the RAID meta-data using the CLEAN command), using a Win10 boot USB, then plug in the drives that you want to use for RAID, set up the RAID functionality in BIOS, create the array, install the OS, including with the RAID drivers on a USB stick (a second one), and then when the OS was installed, plug in any additional data drives and set them up.

Thanks for the advice. (1) How exactly do I change disks Non Raid ?.I changed to non Raid in bios but then wouldnt
boot. so I changed back again (2) I have a clone of the existing OS and all data etc Once the Array is created I presume I can clone the old OS and data back to the Array ?.

Thanks.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I think you might be missing @VirtualLarry's point. Virtual Larry is not telling you how to get your system to boot in Non-RAID Mode. Virtual Larry is guiding you through the proper way to make sure you can set up your computer again this time with the RAID 1 you desire. Because the current way you're doing it is going to end up messing things up. He told you, in order:

Have a Backup. Not a disk based clone (because it will be useless here). But an actual file-based backup that you can restore important files from. Yes this is a re-install. No that won't keep your current OS, and it's not as easy, but he's giving you this advice because it is the best way to go about this for a long-term setup.

Put the RaidXpert Drivers on a thumb drive. There is a Package on the MSI Website with these drivers or its also on the driver disc that came with the motherboard.

Delete all the data on both of your drives. This gives you a clean base to start with.

Configure RAID 1 in the BIOS with the two wiped drives. No hot spare. You'll initialize both drives for RAID 1 as @ch33zw1z pointed out which will erase all data on both disks. This is covered in page 82 and forward in the Manual that ch33zw1z linked to.

Install Windows 10 and license it. You'll need that thumb drive you made with the RaidXpert drivers on it so that Windows 10 can see the disk to install to. Again, the motherboard manual ch33zw1z linked to will cover this.

Restore your files and programs from your backup.

If the above sounds like a lot to mess with, that's because it is. Software RAID is not a panacea, and especially with SSDs it's usually more trouble than it's worth. If you don't want to mess with RAID, you still need to re-install Windows, but you can do so after setting the BIOS to Non-RAID. That way, there's no drivers or RAID Configuration to mess with when you go to reinstall.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Delete all the data on both of your drives. This gives you a clean base to start with.

And specifically, to truly clean off a drive that has been in a RAID, you need to delete the RAID meta-data signature on the drive, which may not be possible if the drive/controller in BIOS is actually "in RAID mode". So my suggestion was to disable RAID mode in BIOS, then boot a Win10 USB stick, during the setup process, when you're at the drive selection screen, hit "SHIFT+F10". That should bring up a Command Prompt, then type DISKPART, which will let you start DISKPART.EXE.

From there, use LIST DISK, SELECT DISK #, and then when you have the proper disk selected, use CLEAN (to clean the first and last million sectors or so), or CLEAN ALL (to completely wipe the disk clean). This may take some time for the CLEAN ALL to complete, there's no progress bar.

Best if you DISCONNECT ALL OTHER DRIVES BEFORE DOING DISKPART / CLEAN. Don't want to accidentally erase something important.

 

[Bones69]

I have recently had a system set up using AMD Raid (on the Motherboard) with Windows 10. I have 2 X Samsung SSD 1 TB but am having "problems" in that when booting up computer I always get message saying "Array is Critical etc etc" .It then continues to Boot into Windows 10 fine and runs ok. THEN if I restart and go into RAID Bios" I see that 1 disk is listed as "Online and other as "hot spare" both in green letters (I set the 2nd drive up as hot spare. Anyway to all intents it is RAID 1 and has 2 SDD's . Then I come out of Raid Bios and continue onwards to windows 10. THEN if I wait maybe 15 mins to 1 hour and then restart (NOT shutdown and reboot, simply restart) then the messages often changes back to "Normal" during booting and into Windows 10. THEN if I shutdown the computer (NOT having done any real work on computer) and reboot, it then reverts Back to "This array is Critical" . MAYBE it is saying "Critical" because it is RAID 1 and at THAT time it does not have a full mirror on 2nd disk and takes 1/2 to catch up ?. Just wondering WHY shutting down and rebooting (versus simply restarting from on) switches it always back to Critical ?. . Its like everytime I reboot it needs to complete the Mirror again ?. (Both disks show as being in the same Array (RAID 1) even though one is marked as "Hot Spare. I have previously scanned BOTH disks and seem ok . I then "Initialized" the 2nd Drive and got it right in that it was Disk 1 that holds the OS . Then made it a global hot spare and that made the RAID 1 ) How long would it take to complete a Mirror again,as I guess it may be rebuilding although doesn't tell me that.

Any ideas appreciated.

If you have not fixed this issue i have solved it and quite easily. What i did was go to amd support page download the most current drivers for my configuration.

Made a back up image of my system incase i destroyed it messing around.

Then once raidxpert 2 was up and running on my pc that still had the critical error on raid... i simply used their transform function to rebuild the raid that was showing a critical error and it is completely fine now these drivers and installers were very new and apparently there was a problem with a may 2019 windows update HOPE this helps if your still not resolved not sure if that was my issue or if i installed an old drive but its ready to rock.

 

[tryingtogetssdraidtowork]

Thanks I will try that. I have simply been living with it fluctuating from Critical to Normal, Will try what you suggest.