Nevermind

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, so I think I may have fried a hard drive in my RAID 5. I'm using the Silicon Imaging RAID controller on my MSI Neo4 Platinum. When I press F4 to go the RAID controller page, it gives me some options, but there's nothing there about rebuilding a RAID 5. There's rebuild RAID 1 though. Oh, and how do I even check which drive (if any) is dead in the first place?

*EDIT*
I'll just reformat and rebuild the array. Nothing too important on there anyways...

 

[GrammatonJP]

If you download the Sil3114_NM3001.zip off msi's site, it has the RAID utillity in windows that can check your array.. its 15 megs.

 

[acole1]

RAID 5 should work by dropping the spare drive into the spot of the one that died. When you replace the dead one with one that is working it should rebuild itself.

 

[RaiderJ]

I was under the assumption that a RAID 5 would rebuild itself automatically once a new drive was installed.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, so I just stick in a spare 200GB IDE drive I had laying around and installed Windows on it. I installed the RAID drivers that were on my mobo CD, and a new drive appeared. However, when I tried to access it, it said it was not connected. I couldn't see used/free space either. Does this mean one of my drives is dead? If so, how do I find out which one is dead?

 

[Skeeedunt]

Are you unable to boot off the RAID 5 device? I thought they were supposed to keep limping along with a single drive failure.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
Are you unable to boot off the RAID 5 device? I thought they were supposed to keep limping along with a single drive failure.

That's what I thought too, but according to previous posts, apparently, you need to put in another drive before all the data is recontructed. Makes sense. But how am I supposed to know which drive to RMA?

 

[nervegrind3r]

which controller do you have? are you sure the controller has raid 5 hardware built in? are you booting from the array?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I have the Silicon Image RAID controller on the Neo4 Platinum. It's software RAID 5, not hardware. I was booting from the array before Windows gave me a BSOD and wouldn't boot. So I then installed Windows on a spare 200GB hard drive and installed the RAID drivers. When I tried to access the RAID 5, it wouldn't let me. How do I test if a hard drive is dead or not?

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Bump. So how do I found out which hard drive in my array is dead?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Does the dead drive show up in your RAID controller software? It should identify the drive by channel. Then go to the manual, and find out when drive is connected on that channel.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

All 3 drives show up in my RAID controller software. So does this mean that none are dead?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: t3h l337 n3wb
All 3 drives show up in my RAID controller software. So does this mean that none are dead?

It should show the status of them. If they are "normal" or however your RAID software reports them, then yes, they are fine. You might have to rebuild the array due to a parity miscalculation within the array. It does happen. (In fact, I just performed a consistency check on my RAID arrays--it is recommended you do this from time to time). To check on how to do this stuff, you need to check out the manual. (Or PM it to me, and I'll see if I can give you a hand. Different controllers have different setups).

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, here's what my RAID controller software looks like: Photobucket Link

It's onboard software RAID, so it sucks.
This is what I see when I boot into Windows installed on the 200GB IDE drive: Photobucket Link

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
If you download the Sil3114_NM3001.zip off msi's site, it has the RAID utillity in windows that can check your array.. its 15 megs.

Have you done this yet? If so, is it one of the pics you posted or can you post of pic of it?

 

[ribbon13]

So you were using a softraid as a boot drive? That's like driving a convertable in man-eating mosquito country. RAID5 is supposed to be able to boot with a failed member. It rebuilds all missing data on the fly making it slow, but still accessable.

Maybe because the array has failed, it can't load the driver to read the array from the array.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, I installed the RAID utility on Windows. Here's a screenshot: Photobucket Link

I'm pretty sure this is bad. I don't see any RAID groups, it says there is no free space on my drives even though there's like 15GB free, it shows my drives as "orphaned", and it also said there were failed attempts to restore redundancy? On the bright side, I don't think any hard drives are dead... Argh, this is frustrating. I've learned my lesson. No more crappy software RAID 5 for me.

 

[IsDanReally]

The lack of free space, means that all the space is currently allocated to a partition, so that makes perfect sense. Your posts make me want to stay away from using software raid 5 on my new build.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, so the free space thing makes sense. What about all the RAID experts out there (FullMetal Chocobo, ribbon13)? Is there anything else wrong in the screenshot?

 

[GrammatonJP]

I never tried this as I only use hardware raids...

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm the only type of software that I'm aware of

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
I never tried this as I only use hardware raids...

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm the only type of software that I'm aware of

That program says that I need image files of each of my drives. So do I need to hook them up invidiually to a SATA port and extract image files of them? If that works and I manage to compile an image file of the RAID, how can I restore it to the RAID?