Upgraded to 10 - mirrored drives failed

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jfiges

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May 27, 2013
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Hi all,

Recently upgraded from 7 to 10 via a clean install.

A few weeks previously I bought a second HDD to mirror my mass storage drive, which I set up in disk manager. This was working fine until this evening.

Today I performed the upgrade on my SSD, assuming the other drives would be fine. However, after booting into 10 for the first time, my storage drives aren’t working. Initially they were both listed in disk manager as foreign. I rectified this by ‘importing disks’ and now they read: dynamic, online. 1,8TB unallocated space - failed. No partitions listed.

I assume this issue is because 10 handles RAID differently than 7, which I guess was a major oversight on my part.

Usually I’d dive right in and try to fix issues like this myself, but given this is where all my data is kept I thought I’d be a little more cautious.

Anyone come across a similar problem or have any ideas? Also, would removing one drive protect it if something happens to the other, or would I need both to have windows recognise the drives?

Thanks in advance,
James

Edit: also had a read through this article and tried some of the solutions that didn’t seem destructive of data, including the obvious ones including trying reactivating disk etc.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/troubleshooting-disk-management#disk-not-initialized
 
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I would get Acronis and boot from that to backup one of the physical members of the array. Reboot into Windows, browse into the image of the backup and just manually restore the files to a separate location. That's what I would try first.

Then never use dynamic discs again.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/6533

I don't know if Macrium (free) supports dynamic disks but you could look into it as well.
 
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Hi Sam, thanks for your reply. Never used Acronis before but reading the website it looks like I can recover files to the same location they’re at already, which would be ideal as the disk is more than half-full and I have nothing else of the same capacity to restore them to otherwise. Am I parsing that correctly?
 
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Okay, so you can't backup a disk to itself even if there's free space. So if you don't have a 3rd drive then you will have to back up one disk to the other part of what was its mirror which is RISKY.

I would try to avoid this scenario if at all possible.

You wouldn't want to clone it, just use the free space to store the backup image.

Better to just get an external:

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-STEA1000400/dp/B00TKFEEAS?crid=1N6RRM7VTDOBD&keywords=1tb+usb+3.0+external+hard+drive&qid=1539788975&sprefix=1tb+usb%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-4&ref=sr_1_4
 
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Hi Sam, thanks for replying :)

So I actually have a spare 500Gb external, and there's a few hundred gigs spare on my SSD - are you saying I can make a backup ISO of the disks, format them and restore the data that way? I'll do some digging and see if I've got a spare 2TB external lying about (dubious) which may be the most reliable solution

My other thought had been to make a linux live disk, boot in to that and remove the mirror in linux but I'm not sure if there will be the same compatibility issues as there are with windows.

Jamie
 
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Dynamic discs is a Windows technology originally, I have no idea if linux supports it? Acronis makes .tib files when it makes a backup image of a volume. Once that's made you can boot into windows and if you have the Acronis app installed you can just browse the .tib image file. Once you verify all your data is there and that this .tib file is stored on your external drive, then you can destroy the mirror and revert the disc/s back to basic. That of course will destroy all the data on any drive you revert to Basic. According to the article I linked above you can then restore the image from the .tib file and it will restore as a basic disc.
Then just use Acronis to make regular backups to your 2TB external and forget about software RAID. Remember to keep the external disconnected when not in use to prevent ransomware from ruining your day.
 
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Quick google tells me no, linux won't support them (at least not officially) due to licensing issues as, as you say, they're windows technology.

As Acronis was a paid subscription to access the imaging software I found a free alternative, called testdisk. It's found the disks, partitions and files intact! Currently copying to my external (which turned out to be only 1TB, hopefully I can split the copying to include the 500Gb also) as per your suggestion - fingers crossed!

I take it since you've recommended external backups in the future you don't think software RAID is worthwhile?

edit: grammar
 
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Well I suppose by backup I mean insurance against drive failure. I felt since I've had this one HDD for like 5 years it was becoming more likely every day. I suppose I should be worried about viruses etc too!
 
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