RAID problem

KGhaleon

I've had very little experience using RAID, and don't understand it completely. I've got this computer with my that has RAID 0 set up on it with three hard drives. One ATA drive and two SATA, the ATA drive just has some data on it and isn't important. The two SATA drives seem to be set up with Striping.

On boot when I look at the RAID setup it looks like this:

RAID 0:

---

Size

---

Status:
Drive 1

---

250GBish

---

Good
Drive 2

---

250GBish

---

error occurd

etc

It then gives me the system32/drivers/pci.sys error, meaning that something is missing or corrupt. A simple chkdsk could probably correct the problem, or I could try copying the file from a windows disc...but I'm not sure which of the two hard drives I should be working on to correct the issue. I'm still trying to find the RAID drivers. Suggestions?

KG

tibul

well the thing with striping is that the data is split apart across the two drives this is why you have better speeds with RAID 0 as it reads from both the drives at the same time so effectively your working on both drives, can you boot up into windows?

KGhaleon

So it basically just sees both drives as a single partition? Yeah, windows does not boot. I get this error message:

system32/drivers/pci.sys

Not something that I couldn't easily fix with an ATA drive. I'm just not sure how to go about correcting this in a RAID. I figure if I can find the RAID drivers I could go into recovery console and try to restore the files...but I can't find the drive. ;_;

KG

KGhaleon

I got the drivers, but when I go into recovery console the partition for the RAID doesn't show up. I remembered to load them with F6, of course. I took the drives and individually hooked them up to another machine and examined them to see if perhaps one of them had gone bad...but they seem fine.

However, I noted on one of the drives there was nothing but unallocated space. That doesn't sound normal.

KG

tibul

It sounds like the partition has been lost in some way on one of the hard drives.

KGhaleon

When you take either drive out of a RAID and hook it up to another system, does it destroy the RAID setup? and is rebuilding the RAID the equivalent to formatting a hard drive? I may have changed the RAID when I was looking them over.

The guy that owns the machine said it stopped booting when he added a new DVD-drive, which I have looked at. I get that error message regardless of whether I boot into last known good, normal mode, safe mode, etc.

I won't be looking at the machine again until monday, but for the time being...do I need to set the RAID up again? The customer only seemed interested in recovering the data as a last resort.

KG

tibul

you say it happend after he added a new dvd drive, there hasn't been anything changed in BIOS has there? as there is a section in BIOS for the RAID controller if one drive has been deselected etc it could cause the problem. No it shouldn't hurt taking one drive out and putting it in another machine as long as nothing is changed.

KGhaleon

Oh ok, I'll try checking the BIOS when I sit down at the machine tomorrow. I'm hoping that's all it is, but the fact that one of the drives was unallocated doesn't seem right. If one drive goes out, I'm guessing data recovery is impossible(or almost impossible).

KG

KGhaleon

How of curiousity, is data recover on a RAID system using something like RAID0 possible if you don't have access to one of the drives? It makes my head hurt.

Anyway, ever since I finished looking over the two drives the information on bootup has changed and looks like this:

RAID 0:

---

Size

---

Status: (failed)
Drive 1

---

250GBish

---

Normal
Drive 2

---

250GBish

---

Missing

I looked over drive 2 and it doesn't appear that the hard drive has died, it just doesn't have any data on it. It's completely unallocated. I did some research into a message that shows up upon booting into windows with that missing SATA drive hooked up as a slave, and I get: "Disk reliability degrading, risk of data loss! Backup now, etc"

Research tells me that the problem is with the hard drive, but I'm a little doubtful.

KG

tibul

As far as i know it would be very difficult to retrieve the data now, maybe if you rebuilt the raid then used some very good recovery software you might get some of the data back but not sure myself if this would work.

KGhaleon

What I had to do to fix it:

Before booting into a windows disc to access recovery console, he(another technician) noticed that there was another option available for booting into a recovery partition. We did so and it gave us the option to do a repair on the drive. After it was finished, the system booted normally again and the customer's data was all there.

The customer was happy and I was relieved, glad I sought after more help or I would have had to give the owner bad news. This is why I hate RAID.

Stuff like this makes me hesitant about moving to a harder job.

KG