Repair Raid 5 with one drive failure

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Todwin8

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Feb 24, 2013
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I have a 3tb raid 5 setup with 4-1tb seagate barracuda sata drives. All four drives connect to a raid controller card and configured with silicon image inc. raid configuration utility. Last week one of the drives starting "clicking", and when tested independently has died. The raid drive is still intact and all data preserved, this was why I chose raid 5. I have installed a new identical drive but the raid has not rebuilt the 4th drive.
The raid utility does not show any conflicts and there is no setting to rebuild raid 5,it does offer to rebuild raid 1 but that will not help me.

I am running windows vista 64bit on a super micro server board. This is a video editing computer and the raid drive is the working media drive for storage of raw media and working projects. Raid 5 gave me a good combination of speed and protection on a budget.

Please advise how to install and repair the 4th drive. I don't want to start working on new projects unil this is resolved.
Thanks!!!!
 
Solution
dbhosttexas
I have not had to do this yet (I have mine running under Linux, not Windows), BUT...

According to the users guide available at http://www.rosewill.com/Mgnt/Uploads2/AttachmentForProduct/RC209-EX_user_manual-bk.pdf the failed drive, should be swapped with the system power off. On reboot trip the host into the RAID controller firmware, and select "Rebuild RAID set" option.

FWIW, my Rosewill RAID is the RSV-S8 with the included RAID controller / port replicator card. Your PCI version I believe is the same chipset / driver, but may have different software. Under Linux it is managed through mdadm. I am not 100% certain if the driver for my PCIe card and your PCI card are the same, but if so, you might want to check out the users guide...
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Todwin8

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Feb 24, 2013
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i am using a Rosewill RC-209-EX PCI 2.3, 32bit, 33/66Mhz SATA Controller Card with the Chipset: Silicon Image SiI3114 SATA controller chip.
Silicon Image has been no help, I gues I will try talking to Rosewill.

 
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FireWire2

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Oct 30, 2006
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Most of the decent RAID engine, all you need to to do is remove the BAD drive and replace it with the new drive - hot - you should not shut down, or power off....

Just simple replace the drives.

You may check the SATA_RAID>Mamanger of SI - make sure rebuilt option is enable/automatic
 
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dbhosttexas

dbhosttexas

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Jan 15, 2013
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I have not had to do this yet (I have mine running under Linux, not Windows), BUT...

According to the users guide available at http://www.rosewill.com/Mgnt/Uploads2/AttachmentForProduct/RC209-EX_user_manual-bk.pdf the failed drive, should be swapped with the system power off. On reboot trip the host into the RAID controller firmware, and select "Rebuild RAID set" option.

FWIW, my Rosewill RAID is the RSV-S8 with the included RAID controller / port replicator card. Your PCI version I believe is the same chipset / driver, but may have different software. Under Linux it is managed through mdadm. I am not 100% certain if the driver for my PCIe card and your PCI card are the same, but if so, you might want to check out the users guide for the RSV-S8 as it has a fairly detailed description of how to rebuild your RAID from within the Windows driver and application.

http://www.rosewill.com/Mgnt/Uploads2/AttachmentForProduct/UserManual-RSV-S8.pdf

Hope that helps!
 
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leonfeldman89

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Jan 29, 2013
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I hope you realize that you have a greater than 25% chance that the RAID will fail during rebuild with this configuration.
NEVER USE CONSUMER HARD DRIVES FOR BIG RAIDS!

Don't rebuild it. Get a new 3TB Hard drive for $150 and transfer the data.
You will have faster write times on a single hig density drive than 3 drives in RAID 5 and you won't have to worry about the inevitable failure of the RAID.
 
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dbhosttexas

dbhosttexas

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Jan 15, 2013
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Two questions...

#1. Where did you get your number from? Just because one drive failed, doesn't mean another one is right behind it... Yes using cheap consumer grade hard disks comes with some risk, but that is a risk some are willing to take. We have to assume the OP being a responsible admin has data backups as he / she assumed that risk in the build in the first place.

#2. Have you seen the drives being stuffed into "Server class" boxes by the likes of Dell and HP? I have recently had to replace several Western Digital "Blue" drives out of I think it was an HP server, but it might have been one of the Dell boxes... Yes higher end stuff has higher end drives typically, but the big MFGs do tend to slide cheap drives in where they think they can get away with it...
 
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Todwin8

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Feb 24, 2013
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Thanks for the information and the link!

As for the larger single drive vs. raid 5...when I built this system 1tb drivers were affordable and 1.5tb drives were still a little pricy for me, and 2tb were not on the market. I have had great success and reliablility up to this point. Yes 1 drive did fail but if it was a single drive I would have lost all of my data. Now all I need to do is verify I have a fresh back up and rebuild the raid.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.
 
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Todwin8

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Feb 24, 2013
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The raid software I had installed did not support rebuilding raid 5, I was able to download the software from rosé will for the RSV-s8 and rebuild the raid in windows.
Thanks again for the help...problem solved!!!
 
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