Question My SSD System Drive died. Trying to reattach the previous RAID disks without data loss

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
R

RaidNewbie1951

Jan 14, 2025
4
0
10
Hi,
I have an MSI Z790 Pro WIFI mobo. Windows 11 was installed on the SSD and a pair of Seagate HDD configured as RAID.
The SSD died. I am struggling to recreate the RAID setup.

I got off to a false start and don't seem to be able to go back. I was told to go into the BIOS setup screen and turn on VMD. When I do this the system doesn't show any disks and I cant install windows on the new SSD. MSI said I need to load the RAID drivers and sent me to a link for the Intel RST drivers. I cut a flash drive and proceeded to install the RST only to get an error trying to install the Optane driver from W11 (no error code).

Net net, 4 copies of windows 11 boot records and no windows 11 and no way I can see to completely reinitialize the SSD for a completely new clean attempt at this installation.

The data is important and not backed up recently (yeah I know DUMB!!!). But it's sitting on two perfectly fine hard drives I just can't get to.

Does anyone have any ideas where I go from here.

Thanks in advance.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Hi, The off-line back-up was not done. I got behind. Sorry. The RAID was set up at the time the PC was built using MSI tools on the motherboard . Its not windows Raid.

Do you need more info? Yes I know its my fault, but I honestly didn't expect a new SSD which is not used as a data store to crap out in 9 months, what I did expect was the possibly one of my Barracuda drives might fail.
Hence the RAID 1 config.

All of which is moot because I am where I am and need the missing data off the drive.

Thanks
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
RaidNewbie1951 said:
Hi, The off-line back-up was not done. I got behind. Sorry. The RAID was set up at the time the PC was built using MSI tools on the motherboard . Its not windows Raid.

Do you need more info? Yes I know its my fault, but I honestly didn't expect a new SSD which is not used as a data store to crap out in 9 months, what I did expect was the possibly one of my Barracuda drives might fail.
Hence the RAID 1 config.

All of which is moot because I am where I am and need the missing data off the drive.

Thanks
Click to expand...
So, you're trying to do a full OS install on a new SSD?
Do that with only the SSD connected. RAID selected in the motherboard BIOS.

Get past that, and then connect the two HDDs.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thank you. That was exactly what I tried but when I selected RAID on the motherboard there were no disks visible except the 8GB flash drive with the O/S install. MSI told me to load the RST drivers at installation disk selection time. No drives still.

After trying various options with and without the sata discs installed I ended up with Window 11 in a loop creating Installation partitions and then reverting back to select a drive to install windows. At no point did I get far enough, as far as, I could tell that the Sata drives had been accessed. Most of the time they were not connected to avoid corruption.

The only time they were plugged in I switched to AHCI (sic) and saw both drives.

At this point I want to cleanse the SSD completely and start over.

My other thought has been to try to load one of the pair as a regular HDD in an older ASUS intel I5 and mount it with an offset (something I read but don't really know how to do) to bypass the MBR. Read the drive to another back-up source and then go back to trying to fix this AFTER I rescue the data.

Thoughts?

Thanks for taking the time to help
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom