RAID0 issue with customer. Any help would be appreciated...

[zipz422]

So a customer calls me and says he needs a new motherboard Asus sent him put in. He said Asus told him the old board died because of a Win 10 update (I didn't even think it would be possible without a failed bios flash). He didn't mention anything else and I normally never work with RAID setups, so I accepted the job.'

I put the mobo in his workstation (asus Z9PE-D8 WS board with 2 xeons) and he told me two of the drives are a RAID 0. Problem is 4 of the drives are the same drive (1TB Samsung 840 EVO) and he doesn't know which ones are set up as RAID. He had pictures so I plugged them in the same way (based on the writing on the cables). The board has 2 different sections for the SATA ports. One being for RAID SATA ports and the other being for regular SATA drives. He has a total of 6 drives.

I had a limited amount of time so I couldn't check everything, but it looks like the board has the option for 2 different RAIDs. The first being the LSI and the other being the Intel RAID controller and you can change between the 2 with jumpers (I learned this after looking it up at home).

So it shows no Operating system and a missing or failed RAID drive: https://imgur.com/a/y1hmuCp

I go back tomorrow night, but do you have any suggestions other than changing to the Intel RAID to resolve the issue?

I will also check if the drives all have power, but not sure what else to do. I would disconnect everything except the RAID drives, but he has no idea which ones are the RAID drives. I'm assuming the ones that are plugged into the RAID sata ports, but theres 3 plugged in and not just 2.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm assuming the ones that are plugged into the RAID sata ports, but theres 3 plugged in and not just 2.

Well, you can have a three-disk RAID 0, really almost any number, 2 or higher, as long as you have available ports. (RAID-0 is striping. RAID-1 is mirroring.)

Second, I'm not aware, that you can "trivially" swap drives, between an LSI and an Intel RAID controller, because of the differences in RAID metadata that the controller writes to the drive, that "marks" it as part of the RAID.

You might be able to use some low-level tools, accessing the drives read-only (use Linux, and mount the device read-only?), and inspect the RAID metadata yourself, and determine which type of RAID it was part of.

 

[mxnerd]

User manual

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2011/Z9PE-D8-WS/Manual/E12544_Z9PE-D8_WS_UM_V5_WEB.pdf

Setting jumpers seems only change what RAID utility you can use (either LSI (RAID 0, 1, 10) or INTEL (RAID 0,1,5,10)) on C602 chipset SATA pots (2 light blues, 4 blacks and another 4 blacks on the other side of motherboard)

Ask your customer which utility he uses and set the jumper accordingly.

There is no LSI Raid controller or chip on the motherboard. The gray (white) SATA ports use Marvell 9230 (RAID 0, 1, 10) chip.

But like VL said, the meta data on the disk could be different. You probably have to swap disks to find out which is which and whether it's functional.

 

[zipz422]

I'm assuming he's just using two only because he said its 2TB and it makes sense if he's using two 1TB SSDs.

Well, you can have a three-disk RAID 0, really almost any number, 2 or higher, as long as you have available ports. (RAID-0 is striping. RAID-1 is mirroring.)

Second, I'm not aware, that you can "trivially" swap drives, between an LSI and an Intel RAID controller, because of the differences in RAID metadata that the controller writes to the drive, that "marks" it as part of the RAID.

You might be able to use some low-level tools, accessing the drives read-only (use Linux, and mount the device read-only?), and inspect the RAID metadata yourself, and determine which type of RAID it was part of.

 

[zipz422]

Thanks. Do you know of any tools I can use on a windows live to identify which drives are RAID drives? Just so I can narrow it down and unplug the rest. Someone mentioned speccy will tell you, so I will try that tonight.

User manual

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA2011/Z9PE-D8-WS/Manual/E12544_Z9PE-D8_WS_UM_V5_WEB.pdf

Setting jumpers seems only change what RAID utility you can use (either LSI (RAID 0, 1, 10) or INTEL (RAID 0,1,5,10)) on C602 chipset SATA pots (2 light blues, 4 blacks and another 4 blacks on the other side of motherboard)

Ask your customer what utility he used.

There is no LSI Raid controller or chip on the motherboard. The gray (white) SATA ports use Marvell 9230 (RAID 0, 1, 10) chip.

But like VL said, the meta data on the disk could be different. You probably have to swap disks to find out which is which and whether it's functional.

 

[mxnerd]

INTEL: Probably this. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/55005/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST

LSI:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z9PED8_WS/HelpDesk_Download/ for Windows 8.1