Major Problem: 2x8tb HDD on Windows 10 using disk management mirror missing after swapping computer case.

[Archangel768]

Hi. I just got a new computer case today and transferred everything to the new case. I had 2x8tb (one ironwolf, and one western digital red) mirrored using disk management in windows 10 so that everything that is on one of them was backed up on the other. I also have a 3tb seagate which I'm having trouble with and was just being used as a normal stand alone drive.

The issue that I'm having is that when I turned my computer on, it started up fine however these drives are not showing up in my computer. In diskmanagement it says that one 8tb drive and the 3tb drive are 'missing' and that they have 'failed'. The other 8tb is 'online' but 'failed'. I have tried 'reactivating drive' for the 3tb (the information on there is not important, just steam games.) but it says to run chkdsk which I cannot work out how to do.

Is there anything that can be done and what should I do?

Thanks

 

[SkyNetRising]

Check your drive connections, if everything is properly connected.
Can you show screenshot from Disk Management?

If RAID1 was set up using Disk Management (disks were converted to dynamic) and you changed sata ports (when installed pc into new case),
then dynamic disks would show as foreign and you'd have to import them.

 

[Archangel768]

Check your drive connections, if everything is properly connected.
Can you show screenshot from Disk Management?

If RAID1 was set up using Disk Management (disks were converted to dynamic) and you changed sata ports (when installed pc into new case),
then dynamic disks would show as foreign and you'd have to import them.

Hi, thank you for your reply. I believe it is in raid 1 although I'm not sure as I don't remember disk management wording it that way. I got one drive to mirror the other. Here is a photo of disk management. I'm not quite sure how to upload a photo to this forum so this is a link to it on dropbox. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hzm6p4280z49tjn/hdd%20problems.png?dl=0

Disk 1 is a new SSD which is why it's unallocated. Disregard this.
Disk 2 is one of the 8tb drives that I'm having problems with.
Disk 3 is another SSD. It's working fine. Disregard this one.
Disk 4 I think is something you referred to in your post.
Disk 5 is my primary boot SSD. disregard this as well.

Then the two missing drives, one is the other 8tb which was part of the mirror with Disk 2.
The other is simply a single 3tb seagate drive. (one of the ones infamous for failing so the issue with this one could be something else entirely.

The 3tb drive isn't very important as it's just steam games that can be redownloaded. But I'd really like to get the 8tb drives back up and running (although fortunately %95 of the most important photos are backed up elsewhere).

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can't view dropbox files.
Can you upload your screenshot to imgur.com or tinypic.com ?

 

[13thmonkey]

Once you fix this you should consider moving to a mirrored storage space, a bit less susceptible to issues like this, and you can thin provision so you could add more disks later.

And if the point of this was for protection, and not uptime, i.e. needing accessing 100% of the time, then an actual backup is simpler and covers more issues. Mirroring for instance would not cover deletion, corruption, ransoming etc. as the issue would simply be copied to both versions of the file.

 

[13thmonkey]

You may find that just connecting the 8's and the OS drive and repeatedly testing different ports will get it working. Once you've got those sorted you'll have fewer options for the 3 and so it should be easier to find.

 

[Archangel768]

Can't view dropbox files.
Can you upload your screenshot to imgur.com or tinypic.com ?

Here's a link to imgur

https://imgur.com/aO3Bw9W

 

[SkyNetRising]

Right-click on Disk 4 and choose "Import foreign disk".

 

[Archangel768]

Right-click on Disk 4 and choose "Import foreign disk".

Thank you! I just did that and can see the drive and all my files again like normal. I noticed though that one 8tb drive says NTFS but the other one says RAW. Any idea what's up with that?

I also still can't seem to get the 3tb working.

 

[Archangel768]

Once you fix this you should consider moving to a mirrored storage space, a bit less susceptible to issues like this, and you can thin provision so you could add more disks later.

And if the point of this was for protection, and not uptime, i.e. needing accessing 100% of the time, then an actual backup is simpler and covers more issues. Mirroring for instance would not cover deletion, corruption, ransoming etc. as the issue would simply be copied to both versions of the file.

Thanks for your suggestion. I'll look into it. I just need something that whenever I add something, delete something or modify something on one of the 8tb drives, it's then updated and backed up straight away to the 2nd 8tb drive. Do you have any recommendations?

 

[SkyNetRising]

You may need to re-sync your mirror raid.

But about your 3TB drive - check, if it is connected properly, and sata port is not disabled (because of BIOS settings or some M.2 drive being used in the system). Also it might just have died.

 

[13thmonkey]

Storage space would work, but you must have a back up, the loss of a file during the hour it might take for a backup to cycle through its much less likely than the loss of a file due to file corruption.

Precisely why do you need it to be mirrored instantly?

 

[Archangel768]

Storage space would work, but you must have a back up, the loss of a file during the hour it might take for a backup to cycle through its much less likely than the loss of a file due to file corruption.

Precisely why do you need it to be mirrored instantly?

I just prefer to have things done straight away rather than say, having a backup scheduled once every day and then potentially losing anything I had done that day if anything happened. What is storage space? I just googled it and it just came up with storage containers etc...

 

[13thmonkey]

Storage space would work, but you must have a back up, the loss of a file during the hour it might take for a backup to cycle through its much less likely than the loss of a file due to file corruption.

Precisely why do you need it to be mirrored instantly?

I just prefer to have things done straight away rather than say, having a backup scheduled once every day and then potentially losing anything I had done that day if anything happened. What is storage space? I just googled it and it just came up with storage containers etc...

Well mirroring is a lot less secure than a backup. Mirroring will only protect against drive failure, nothing else.

I'm on the phone and heading out so can't talk storage spaces right now, pluralising it might give you better results. They are portable from win 10 machine to another machine, and they are expanding.

 

[Archangel768]

You may need to re-sync your mirror raid.

But about your 3TB drive - check, if it is connected properly, and sata port is not disabled (because of BIOS settings or some M.2 drive being used in the system). Also it might just have died.

I can't seem to see anything about re-syncing. As for the 3TB I would not be surprised in the least if it just died as it's one of those infamous seagate barracudas that had something like and 80% fail rate. It is getting older now too. I'm sure the sata port is not disabled as I remember reading my motherboard doesn't need to disable any sata ports when using the m.2 drive. I'll have a look and make sure it's connected properly and the bios settings. Thanks heaps for helping me get access to my data back!

 

[SkyNetRising]

I can't seem to see anything about re-syncing.

It may be called "Reactivate volume".

I'm sure the sata port is not disabled as I remember reading my motherboard doesn't need to disable any sata ports when using the m.2 drive.

PCIE M.2 drive may leave sata ports alone, but SATA M.2 drive most likely will disable some sata port. What M.2 drive are you using? On what motherboard?

 

[Archangel768]

I can't seem to see anything about re-syncing.

It may be called "Reactivate volume".

I'm sure the sata port is not disabled as I remember reading my motherboard doesn't need to disable any sata ports when using the m.2 drive.

PCIE M.2 drive may leave sata ports alone, but SATA M.2 drive most likely will disable some sata port. What M.2 drive are you using? On what motherboard?

It's a AM4 Gigabyte Gaming K7 motherboard. The m.2 SSD is Samsung 960 evo

EDIT: also meant to mention that re-activate volume is greyed out. I guess I could just start again, since I have access to one drive and it all looks good, I could just start a new mirror.

 

[SkyNetRising]

If reactivate is greyed out, then next option is "Repair volume".
If that also is not available, then Remove/break mirror and recreate mirror.

 

[Archangel768]

Storage space would work, but you must have a back up, the loss of a file during the hour it might take for a backup to cycle through its much less likely than the loss of a file due to file corruption.

Precisely why do you need it to be mirrored instantly?

I just prefer to have things done straight away rather than say, having a backup scheduled once every day and then potentially losing anything I had done that day if anything happened. What is storage space? I just googled it and it just came up with storage containers etc...

Well mirroring is a lot less secure than a backup. Mirroring will only protect against drive failure, nothing else.

I'm on the phone and heading out so can't talk storage spaces right now, pluralising it might give you better results. They are portable from win 10 machine to another machine, and they are expanding.

I just found out more about it. It looks really good but It seems I have to start with blank drives so I won't be able to use it as there's no where I can store 7TB of data while I let it format both 8TB drives that I have.

 

[Archangel768]

If reactivate is greyed out, then next option is "Repair volume".
If that also is not available, then Remove/break mirror and recreate mirror.

hmmm I can't seem to find any of those options. I might just have format the 8TB drive that is coming up as raw and then create a mirror again.

 

[13thmonkey]

You'd store that on your backup,

 

[SkyNetRising]

hmmm I can't seem to find any of those options.

Can you show, how it looks in Disk Management now?
May be mirror is already broken.

 

[Archangel768]

hmmm I can't seem to find any of those options.

Can you show, how it looks in Disk Management now?
May be mirror is already broken.

I think that may be the case

https://imgur.com/a/9UeFZ

 

[SkyNetRising]

Yep - color is not red anymore. Mirror is broken.
Delete raw volume and recreate mirror.

 

[Archangel768]

Yep - color is not red anymore. Mirror is broken.
Delete raw volume and recreate mirror.

Will do.
Thank you for all your help!