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Lost Raid1 array...any way to recover?

D

DBissett

Senior member
I had memory problems on a machine with the UD3R mb which caused a boot problem. Had to change the memory and manual said to reboot to "optomized defaults" in BIOS. This erased the RAID1 array and now I've 2 hd's with 2 logical drives on each. Is there any way to recover the RAID array, like just turn it back on and keep going? If not, and I have to reconstruct it from scratch, does that mean I have to reinstall everything that was on the machine from the beginning? Any advice appreciated.

Dave
 
Re-enable RAID in the BIOS, it should be able to pick the arrays back up. Just don't do anything destructive (like re-create and initialize) and you should be OK.

Viper GTS
 
Thanks but it didn't work....I re-enabled RAID in the BIOS and couldn't finish booting....machine would reboot endlessly after identifying the RAID disks each time. The last time I accessed the RAID config screen halfway thru bootup and hit "create RAID volume" to see what the next screen said and got an error saying there wasn't enough space. Only way I can get the machine to boot is to leave RAID disabled. Anything else to try?

Dave
 
Maybe I am talking out eh left side of my mouth but is it possible when the RAID was lost the system lost the driver? F6 it and install MB RAID driver or 3rd party?

Thanks, JASTECH
 
this is a common problem with mobo based raid... it didn't delete the array, it desynched it.
Part of your problem is that you are actually running windows on it...

step one: break the array, but do not delete data.
step two: create a new array from existing drives (it will mirror one of the drives unto another).

I would be careful with step one, what northbridge is your mobo?
 
Originally posted by: taltamir
this is a common problem with mobo based raid... it didn't delete the array, it desynched it.
Part of your problem is that you are actually running windows on it...

step one: break the array, but do not delete data.
step two: create a new array from existing drives (it will mirror one of the drives unto another).

I would be careful with step one, what northbridge is your mobo?
Click to expand...

If possible, backup any data you want to keep first. RAID 1 drives can be plugged into any existing system and accessed individually.
 
The northbridge is "Intel P45 Express". On the RAID config menu I have these choices....1)Delete RAID volume, and 2) Re-set Disks to Non-RAID. Which one do I use if I'm trying to resynch the disks? If I do this, do I then use the choice "Create RAID volume" on that menu? (IIRC, somewhere along the way I originally got a caution statement that said "all the data will be lost/erased, and I'm afraid of running into that again.)

Dave
 
Originally posted by: DBissett
The northbridge is "Intel P45 Express". On the RAID config menu I have these choices....1)Delete RAID volume, and 2) Re-set Disks to Non-RAID. Which one do I use if I'm trying to resynch the disks? If I do this, do I then use the choice "Create RAID volume" on that menu? (IIRC, somewhere along the way I originally got a caution statement that said "all the data will be lost/erased, and I'm afraid of running into that again.)

Dave
Click to expand...

Again, backup any data you want to keep. Every controller does things different, and you may be looking at a reinstall...worst case scenario.

Here's what I would do. Choose Delete RAID volume, recreate the RAID1...after that, the controller should give you the option to mirror from one drive to the other. Hypothetically, you shouldn't lose any data, since the data on one drive will be copied to the other during the mirroring process.

When you delete a RAID 1 volume, all you're really doing is deleting it from the controller side and possibly the metadata on the drives that is used by the contoller to identify what the drive is in terms of RAID arrays. As opposed to a RAID 5, or 0, etc...When you delete the volume, it's gone with all your data too..
 
A friend had that problem one time; I installed his OS on a third drive and the RAID rebuilt itself after it came back up. I don't know what he was thinking putting his OS on a RAID-1 drive.... kinda hard on the drive & CPU
 
yes, i never use raid on the OS drive anymore, too problemetic.

OP, are you showing TWO degraded raid1 arrays or one?
 
I've been distracted by other business and am just now back trying to solve this problem. I did what an earlier poster suggested and tried to delete raid volume or reset drives to non-raid. In each case I got got a message that said data on disks would be lost so I escaped out of both options and disabled raid in BIOS. Now when I tried to reboot I get a message that says "Invalid or damaged bootable partition". Is this recoverable, and how? I have no experience with damaged partitions. Thanks.

Dave
 
Is it XP or Vista? In Vista the repair option on the install disk works pretty good, I would put the BIOS back in RAID mode and try that..

Again, the first thing I would do is reinstall the OS on a third drive, enable RAID in the BIOS and see if the INTEL Matrix app will rebuild it for you.
 
I see the problem created by running the OS on the RAID array, which is now bad, but my purpose for running RAID1 in the first place was to have 2 disks capable of running the system should I lose one of them. So I'm not inclined to install the OS on a third HD, because I don't need the RAID1 just for mirroring data...I can create images periodically that would suffice for that. I spoke with an engineer at a data recovery company this afternoon and he suggested installing the corrupt RAID disks one at a time in a second computer and running partition recovery utility on them. Based on the background I gave him he thought the chances were pretty good that that would work. There are a lot of these products out there. Has anyone ever used one that they'd recommend?
 
You're call, but putting the OS on a RAID 1 is going to hose your system. Every little read and write that the OS does, and there are ALOT of them, is going to get mirrored. As you can see when it goes FUBAR getting the OS back is not as easy as you might think. So you're going to do it again?

A third hard disk large enough for your OS is $50, how much is the data recovery?
 
No, I didn't say I would do it again, not after this experience. I built this machine in December and it was my first RAID1 experience. Before that I had 2 HD's and simply put an image backup BU on drive 2 weekly with differential BU's daily. Never had a problem. Then thought RAID1 was better protection against HD failure. In researching RAID1 I never ran across the recommendation to put the OS on a third drive and only mirror data. My data storage is actually very limited and RAID1 is probably unnecessary for data only. That's all I meant to say earlier. Even if I was only mirroring data now, however, I might still face having to recovery the partitions I've lost, since the RAID was disabled due to a memory problem and default reset in BIOS. That was the step that screwed me, and I took it right out of the Gigabyte manual. They failed to mention that resetting to defaults would disable RAID! No, I will not put the OS on RAID volume again. IF I do try the OS on a third drive, however, is that ALL I put on the third drive? Would you put programs, games, etc. on that third drive or on the RAID1 volume? Thanks.
 
Individuals and companies use RAID 1 mirrors frequently to improve uptime of systems. RAID 1 is very common on the OS disks of servers. Like all RAID systems, it increases cost and complexity, but the ability of the server to continue working after a single-disk failure can save a lot of money when downtime is expensive.

RAID 1 (and all other redundant RAID systems), doesn't eliminate the importance of making ongoing backups onto independent storage media. RAID 1 is, by far, the least likely to suffer corruption and is the easiest to recover if something goes wrong, but things DO happen. So you need to be ready to recover the data, either by resynching the remaining drive with a new drive or by restoring from backups.
 
That extremesystems link was spot on...thanks. I got the "getmydataback" recovery software and it seems to have worked. Loading a new HD now.
 
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