RAID 1 BACK TO SINGLE DRIVE

[ajkjr]

I have a pair of 300GB drives set up in RAID 1 for my OS and APPS. I think it is broken but do not know how to confirm. Machine will not boot automatically to the HDD, I have ot hit F8 and select the hard drive, otherwise it is looking for the CD-ROM drive to boot from.

I really want to get rid of the RAID altogether. I wil then use Acronis to backup (mirror) the 1st drive to the 2nd drive as this was why I had the RAID 1 in the first place. Apparently RAID 1 slows you down a bit and doing the backup may be simpler as I am not an expert on this.

Can I change the RAID back to a single drive without reloading OS and/or Apps and will it fix my boot problem?

Thanks from a newbie.

 

[Hawkeye22]

RAID 1 is not a backup solution, it's fault tolerance. RAID 1 will not protect you from accidental deletions or viruses.

That said, this has been asked at least 3 times this week. Please refer to this post:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263773-32-raid-mirror-raid

 

[ajkjr]

RAID 1 is not a backup solution, it's fault tolerance. RAID 1 will not protect you from accidental deletions or viruses.

That said, this has been asked at least 3 times this week. Please refer to this post:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263773-32-raid-mirror-raid

I am learning the hard way. I now better understand RAID and do not really need it. I will mirror the OS/APPS drive as backup. I have gone into the BIOS and under Configure SATA it is set to IDE. I now have the boot problem. I guess I should set it back to RAID and see if the boot problem goes away and then start over trying to get rid of the RAID 1 setup. I did not setup this machine. I thought the first time I went to the BIOS and looked at storage configurations it was set to IDE. Is it possible to have a RAID setup with this set to IDE? Maybe I read it wrong? The system when I first got it seemed to be in a RAID array as both C & H drives were identical. In a RAID array do you see the two drives as separate drive letters? As you can tell, I do not know a lot about RAID and maybe the guy who setup the PC didn't either? Thanks again for the help.

Joe

 

[Hawkeye22]

The controller can not be set to RAID and IDE at the same time. After you set it to IDE, did you change the boot order to make one of the drives the 1st boot device? If not, you will need to. Also, remember this does not work for all motherboards in which case you may be forced to do a clean install of the OS.

A RAID array can be partioned which would make it show up as separate drives in windows, but the H drive shouldn't be identical to C unless for some reason your are copying all files/folders from one drive to the other.

 

[ajkjr]

The controller can not be set to RAID and IDE at the same time. After you set it to IDE, did you change the boot order to make one of the drives the 1st boot device? If not, you will need to. Also, remember this does not work for all motherboards in which case you may be forced to do a clean install of the OS.

A RAID array can be partioned which would make it show up as separate drives in windows, but the H drive shouldn't be identical to C unless for some reason your are copying all files/folders from one drive to the other.

I checked boot order and the hard drive is set as the 1st boot device. Would it have been possibe for the computer to be setup in a RAID configuration with the SATA configuration set to IDE?

I have not copied anything to the H drive but since it is part of the RAID array I assumed it should be 100% identical to the C drive which is the other drive in the array.

I am thinking the boot problem has something to do with the RAID array being brokenbut can not confirm it.

Thanks

 

[Hawkeye22]

Ok, the hard drive is the 1st device. There is likely another place in the bios which specifies which drive to boot from. This will need to be set. The drive controller can't be set to both RAID and IDE at the same time.

A RAID array is presented as a single drive to the OS. Even if it's partitioned into two, like C and H. You will only have one C drive and one H drive that are for all intensive purposes two unrelated drives to the OS. It will not mirror C to H or vice versa.

It's a RAID 1 array. If one drive dies, the computer will continue to run on the other drive. The only way RAID 1 can be broken to the point that it's not able to boot would be for both drives to die or if the MBR (master boot record) got corrupted. If you can boot with the contoller set to RAID and it is indeed a RAID 1, then at least one of the drives is still good.

Are you sure you are indeed using RAID? Are you sure the contoller wasn't set to RAID, but the drives were set to run individually? To find out, boot into the RAID contoller's bios. You should see the option to do this during a normal boot. You should be able to see any arrays that have been created in there.

What is the make/model of your motherboard and what OS are you using?

 

[ajkjr]

Ok, the hard drive is the 1st device. There is likely another place in the bios which specifies which drive to boot from. This will need to be set. The drive controller can't be set to both RAID and IDE at the same time.

A RAID array is presented as a single drive to the OS. Even if it's partitioned into two, like C and H. You will only have one C drive and one H drive that are for all intensive purposes two unrelated drives to the OS. It will not mirror C to H or vice versa.

It's a RAID 1 array. If one drive dies, the computer will continue to run on the other drive. The only way RAID 1 can be broken to the point that it's not able to boot would be for both drives to die or if the MBR (master boot record) got corrupted. If you can boot with the contoller set to RAID and it is indeed a RAID 1, then at least one of the drives is still good.

Are you sure you are indeed using RAID? Are you sure the contoller wasn't set to RAID, but the drives were set to run individually? To find out, boot into the RAID contoller's bios. You should see the option to do this during a normal boot. You should be able to see any arrays that have been created in there.

What is the make/model of your motherboard and what OS are you using?

Thanks for the help Hawkeye

I have a Asus Rampage III Extreme running Win 7 Pro 64-bit. Reading thru the MB manual now to try and learn more about my computer. Only have had it about a week and a half and have not had time to read through all the documentation etc.

When I get home I am going to set it to RAID and see if it boots okay. If not? If yes, want to get rid of RAID and will mirror the 1st drive to the 2nd drive periodically. Thats what I am trying to figure out how to do. If and when I do that can I set my SATA config to AHCI at that point?

Thanks

Joe

 

[Hawkeye22]

Ok, I took a quick look at the manual. The relevent parts of the manual are:

3.4.5 Configure sata as [IDE, AHCI, RAID].
Set as AHCI since it's currently raid, but you can try IDE later.

3.7.1 Boot device priority.
This can be set to your CD/DVD drive or hard drive as first. IF the CD/DVD is first, make sure there is no disk in the drive when booting.

4.4.4 Intel matrix Storage Manager.
Need to hit CTRL-I during boot to access it. There is an option to "reset disks to non-raid". If it gives a big warning that data may be lost, then cancel out of it.

I couldn't find anywhere to set the disk boot order so I'm assuming it boots from the SATA_0 port on the motherboard, so you might want to temporarily plug the drive you're trying to boot from into this port.

If after trying all these and it still doesn't work, then it may be time for a clean install. Windoes 7 supports AHCI so you will be able to set the "configure sata as" to AHCI.

Good luck to you.

 

[ajkjr]

I finaly figured out boot order. Apparently even though you tell it to boot to the HDD you also have to go to the drives and select which one. Boots fine now.

Have not been able to check Intel MAtrix Storage as I hit CTRL-I till I am blue in the face and nothing happens. Have a call in to ASUS. I want to see what happens when I ask it to break the RAID. Think I will talk with ASUS first.

I think the RAID is broken as the two drive for RAID look nowhere near alike. I just installed Acronis and it is on C under Program Files but not H anywhere. That does not seem right. Probably got broken when I switched to IDE in the BIOS. I did clone my C drive to a dribve in the hot swap bay and then booted to it and it booted fine.

Depending on what I find out about my RAID I may reload my C drive. Have to read more on Acronis so I know how to do that. I think I just boot to the cloned drive, format C and then move it to C but want to check it our first.

Sort of enjoy the learnign expereiewnce but hate it when things do not work as they are supposed to.

Next thing is to experiment with AHCI to see if I can get my hot swap bay working, which is not all that important but will play around with it anyway.

 

[ajkjr]

Best answer selected by ajkjr.