Raid system failure

[Eki_thump]

I am helping a friend repair their computer (they were given it and know nothing of its history). The problem I have is the BIOS shows the system is set up for Raid and on the POST it shows one drive is controlled by a Raid controller. I know nothing about raid and I dont know what flavour it was set up for. All I know it the OS is Vista, there are 2 x Seagate sata drives one is 250GB and the other is 500GB. The 250GB is the c drive and is visible in explorer, the 500GB was being used to store photos and has become inaccessible by the system. I managed to view the properties in disk management and it is formatted as RAW.

Ideally I would like to back up any data I can, my friend has asked me to save the photos if possible but I am afraid this might be a tall ask since the system cannot see the 500gb drive in explorer, only recognised during boot.

I apologise for the lack of information and am hoping I have given enough for an experienced person to suggest what I may be able to do

 

[popatim]

Do the drives sata data cables connect to the motherboard or an add in card (which would be the raid controller)

 

[Eki_thump]

Hi and thankyou for your response. It is an older PC with an INTEL LGA775 board. The SATA cables plug directly to the motherboard and are securely attached.

SPECS are
Motherboard : Intel LGA 775 (Model DG965WH)
CPU: Intel 6600
Memory: 4 x 1GB Kingston (DDR2)
Graphics: ASUS Geforce GTS450
SATA No. 1: Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB (I am not certain of drives but Mobo ports are SATA2)
SATA No. 2: Seagate Barracuda ES2 500GB
2 x LG DVD multiwriter optical - IDE
1 x FDD
PSU - Bliss 500W (I have replaced this with a spare 550W of mine, the Bliss unit was faulty)

During the POST I see the following screens;
(SCREEN 1)
Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM v6.1.0.1002 ICH8R wRAID5

RAID Volumes:
None defined.

Physical Disks:
Port Drive model Size Type/Status(Vol ID)
1 ST3250620NS 232.9GB Non-RAID Disk
5 ST3500320NS 465.8GB Non-RAID Disk
Press <CTRL-I> to enter configuration utility..

(SCREEN 2)
Serial ATA AHCI BIOS, Version UPSD src 04-20-2007
** This version supports only Hard Disk and CDROM drives **

Controller Bus#00, Device#1F, Function#02: 06 Ports, 02 Devices
Port-00: No device detected
Port-01: Hard Disk, ST3250620NS
(Drive is controlled by the RAID BIOS)
Port-02: No device detected
Port-03: No device detected
Port-04: No device detected
Port-05: Hard Disk, ST3500320NS
(Drive is controlled by the RAID BIOS)
AHCI BIOS not installed

 

[gtvr]

If you can see the disk in disk management, it's not completely dead. Raw means not partitioned/formatted, so you won't see it in explorer. You don't want to reformat it, or you lose the photos. Search for a disk partition recovery utility.

 

[rforce]

The system board is likely using a very cheap RAID controller that requires you to setup a drive as a single disk RAID to work. So, I don't suspect that your issue has anything to do with the RAID configuration. Instead, a drive that suddenly starts showing up as RAW partition is because windows can read the file system beyond the MBR (sector 0) on the drive.

In short, this hard drive is likely physically starting to fail. If the data is important to the end user, this is the best time to power it off and send it to a data recovery professional who can safely recover the files.

If you feel that the value of the data on the drive isn't worth the $300 low end price of professional data recovery, you should first start by trying to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive...if you can. Then you can try to recover the data from the clone using your preferred data recovery program.

 

[Eki_thump]

Thankyou everyone for your valued advice.

The problem drive is reporting that it is healthy and has no SMART errors yet if I run Ashampoo HDD3 it reports around 700 bad sectors (I am not sure if this is an acceptable error level for this drive). I also noticed if I disconnect it from the system, windows boots a lot faster.

I have not had any experience with RAID before now so when I saw the post screens reporting RAID drivers etc I thought my problem was going to be same. I think rforce may be correct with the RAID controller setup and I agree that the issue is most likely a failing drive and not RAID. I will seek out professional data recovery and go from there.

Now that I have removed the problem drive, would it be wise to configure the BIOS for the SATA type as AHCI drive using the boards BIOS? It is currently set as RAID which I assume then allows the Intel RAID driver to load. I am hesitant to change the setting from RAID to AHCI in case it deletes this drives data. The system appears to run OK leaving it as RAID but I would welcome any advice on what to do.

Thankyou all for your time and help, your replies are appreciated.

 

[rforce]

Switching from RAID to AHCI might not be bad in the long run, but there are a couple things you need to do before you do it.

1. Make sure you have a full backup of your drive, just in case things don't go as planned
2. Edit your windows registry to prepare for AHCI...otherwise it likely will fail to boot after the switch

 

[popatim]

While your sata ports are in raid mode, the disks are being treated as individual disks so switching to ahci would not be harmful to your system at this point.

Physical Disks:
Port Drive model Size Type/Status(Vol ID)
1 ST3250620NS 232.9GB Non-RAID Disk
5 ST3500320NS 465.8GB Non-RAID Disk

 

[Eki_thump]

Hi rforce and popatim, thanks for your replies. I have followed the advice to have the damaged drive looked at, preliminary estimates started at AU$440. I have returned the disk to my friend to follow this up and decide.

I didnt bother changing the mode to AHCI, the single disk seemed to run OK using the existing raid setup but it too is looking a bit sick so I recommended my friend backup all data and upgrade to a new system or at minimum buy a new HDD.

I was not aware that HDD's could be set to run as a single drive in RAID mode which is why my initial plea for help was RAID focused.

This was my first time posting on Tom's Hardware and it has been a valuable learning experience. Thankyou everyone for the new awareness you have given me.

 

[popatim]

Your welcome 🙂