RAID 5 Not Booting - single drive failure

[Earendil86]

Hello,

Before I begin here are some stats:

OS: Windows 7 Pro
Motherboard: EVGA 141-BL-E757 (Socket 423)
3x64 GB solid state drives (RAID 5 member disks)
1x 4tb standard drive (Non Raid)
1x 2tb standard drive (Non Raid)

I was running the bestbuy MRI software on my computer yesterday and all the hardware scans were completed and passed. I was onto the malware and virus scans when all of a sudden my power went out. I went to boot back up to restart that section and my computer showed an error on the port 0 RAID drive. The status shows the raid array as "Degraded" but also shows a YES for bootable. I made the drive through the BIOS.

The image below shows the screens that I'm seeing. Before I do anything I wanted to get some opinions as I don't want to mess anything up if there is an easy solution.

Essentially I have a few questions on this:

1) Why is the computer not booting? Do you need to somehow get it to start when in a degraded state? I'm relatively new to RAID

2) What is the "recovery volume option" in the raid manager?

3) Is it possible that the drive is actually fine but somehow the power being cut damaged the RAID on that drive? Is it possible to remove that drive, format it on another computer, and then reattach it?

4) If I have to replace the drive, what is the process to add a new drive? Do I have to add a 4th drive before removing the corrupted drive?

Thanks,

 

[USAFRet]

Just to verify...
You were running the OS on 3x 64GB flash drives in RAID 5?
Or actual SSD's?
Make/model, please.

A RAID 5 should be able to boot up if missing a single drive. Corrupted or just completely gone.
"Degraded" just means the RAID 5 array is degraded, because the 3rd drive is missing or otherwise borked up.


Basic PC operations though....this thing should never be powered up without a known good and tested backup in place.

 

[t53186]

Difficult to say what caused the error on that drive, definitely could be power loss related. You could try the recovery volume options first to attempt to rebuild the raid array, and if the drive is OK you won't need to remove it or reformat. To recover you would need to install a replacement drive, net add a 4th drive.
Here is some info from Intel https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005892/technologies.html

 

[Earendil86]

These are actual SSD's (not flash drives) - I can't remember offhand the make/model and am not home right now to check. Yes, the OS is running on the RAID 5.

I wish I had taken a picture of the 2 options within the recovery menu. I googled it and am pretty sure that this is what the two options were and I'm wondering what they do?

1) Enable Only Recovery Disk (States: enables recovery disk if available and disables the master disk)
2) Enable Only Master Disk (States: enables master disk if available and disables the recovery disk)

*Actions will result in change from Continuous Update model to On-Request.

What will these do?

 

[USAFRet]

These are actual SSD's (not flash drives) - I can't remember offhand the make/model and am not home right now to check. Yes, the OS is running on the RAID 5.

I wish I had taken a picture of the 2 options within the recovery menu. I googled it and am pretty sure that this is what the two options were and I'm wondering what they do?

1) Enable Only Recovery Disk (States: enables recovery disk if available and disables the master disk)
2) Enable Only Master Disk (States: enables master disk if available and disables the recovery disk)

*Actions will result in change from Continuous Update model to On-Request.

What will these do?

Completely unsure of what those options entail.

A RAID 5 should boot up after the loss of a single drive.
If nothing else went wrong when the power cut off.

If the actual OS got corrupted during that, all bets are off.

 

[Earendil86]

Is there a method to fix a corrupted OS if it won't boot? Or will I have to format and start fresh?

So far I'm planning on hooking up a 4th SATA drive and placing that into the RAID 5 to see what happens.

Any concerns with this approach?

 

[USAFRet]

Is there a method to fix a corrupted OS if it won't boot? Or will I have to format and start fresh?

So far I'm planning on hooking up a 4th SATA drive and placing that into the RAID 5 to see what happens.

Any concerns with this approach?

Try booting from a Windows install USB or DVD, and run the Repair function.
If that fails, then probably not.

 

[Earendil86]

So I booted with a windows cd and repaired it, then once it booted windows I used the intel raid manager to repair the drive and since then no issues. I think the shutdown messed some files but all my HD's have passed tests since this issue and running smoothly. Working on back ups now.

Thanks for all of the responses.