[SOLVED] Did I brick my drives? Storage spaces Issue

[ahophing]

Hello friends,

A few nights ago, I tried to set up two 3 TB drives using storage space but now it seems like things went horribly awry.
I followed this set of instructions: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-combine-multiple-hard-drives-in-raid-0-using-windows-10s-storage-spaces-feature

Here's my current setup:

OS: 500 GB Samsung SSD
Storage: Two 3 TB Seagate Barracuda's
Store 2: One 250 GB for documents
Motherboard: GA-Z77X-UD3H

I attached my 2 drives to my computer and used Disc Management to link and expand the drives. Everything seemed fine, and I went to bed. The next day, I booted up my computer and the OS kept crashing and I couldn't figure out why. After a few hours, I unhooked both 3 TB drives and everyone works fine (minus the two drives being missing).

I've taken the drives out and tried to hook them up externally to my system. My computer just searches forever and can't locate anything on the drives. Have I permanently bricked them somehow?

Noob question: I was looking around and saw something about setting up the raid array in my bios settings. Is this the part I missed that is causing all the issues? I tried changing the setting from AHCI to RAID and that didn't help. Also very importantly, if/when I set this up, will it cause me to lose all the data on the drives?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Grobe]

You can in general crate a RAID in two ways, either by OS or with harddrive controller. But you never want to mix, because if you're setting up RAID by software, the OS should see both disk.

If you use hardware RAID setup, then you must ensure Windows have installed all the neccesary drivers to see the disk (yes it should appear as one disk to os).

But since you Windows now cannot locate the disks - that may indicate that one of them is going bad.

Is this pc setup a completely new one?

 

[ahophing]

You can in general crate a RAID in two ways, either by OS or with harddrive controller. But you never want to mix, because if you're setting up RAID by software, the OS should see both disk.

If you use hardware RAID setup, then you must ensure Windows have installed all the neccesary drivers to see the disk (yes it should appear as one disk to os).

But since you Windows now cannot locate the disks - that may indicate that one of them is going bad.

Is this pc setup a completely new one?

Thanks for your reply.

This is not a new pc setup, but the 3 TB's drives are new.

I have actually been able to boot now with all drives connected. When I go to the Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Storage Spaces, I can see the E drive. It says there is a two-way mirror, 2.71 TB and I'm using .98 TB pool capacity.

The error reads: Drive or storage space issues; check the Physical drives and Storage spaces sections.

There are a few options I can click on:
-Create a storage space
-Add drives
-Rename Pool
-Optimize drive usage

I can also change or delete the Storage Space

Sometimes I can see the E drive in My Computer - any attempt to open the drive, properties or anything causes the explorer to crash.

Any idea what to do next?

 

[Grobe]

Well - from the error message contents, it may seem like it is a physically failure of one of your disks.

I would have tried to format the disks as normal drives and then used a software like crystal disk to read the S.M.A.R.T. values of the drives to see if anything looks right.

If that doesn't raise any red flags, then just do a normal disk check, and make sure to make a full check (not only file system). Do it for both disks independently of each other.