RAID member died?

Kage

Golden Master
Messages
13,873
Well it happened.

I've been running a RAID 1 setup since I built this computer, and last night, the worst happened (or at least, it could have been the worst).

I was playing a game, and it suddenly bluescreened on me. I reset, and on the RAID config, it displayed:

"Offline Member" on both drives, even though they were both plugged up and fine.

Windows when trying to boot up just said:

"DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER".

So I turned it off the for night, and this morning, discconnected the bottom drive, and the raid status changed to:

"DEGRADED MEMBER" and "MISSING"

But Windows booted up fine.

WHAT TO DO:

I'm wondering wheather to now discconnect this drive, and boot up only the other one, to see if it works.

But I'm worried that in doing that, and the other works and boots it would have created different pariety information on BOTH drives, so if I did anything, would it still fill out the missing spaces and function if I got both drives working again? i.e would source from both to create a perfect mirror again?

Theres always a chance, one drive has failed though, so I'm going to do that in a second.

So scary though what happened... but I haven't lost anything thus far :) But I would have done, if I only had the one drive.

CONCLUSION:

Well, I just dissconnected this drive, and plugged the other up instead.
It simply said:

"OFFLINE MEMBER", and wouldn't boot.

Both should be bootable right? If its RAID 1?

So that proves that the other drive has died, I'm guessing?

It's just weird that when both are plugged up, both say "OFFLINE MEMBER", but one works on its own.

But now I need to buy a new drive. Do I just buy the same size drive, with the same kind of specs? Or do they have to be identical drives?
 
Yes, both should be bootable and it does sound like one of the drives has died.

To my understanding, you can buy a bigger drive, but the RAID will only match the capacity of the smaller disk. I'm not sure if you would have access to the rest of the open space or not.
 
Thanks Celegorm :)

Turns out, it probably was that.

I bought 2x 500GB drives today (didn't realise until I opened one, that for an extra £20, I could have gotten 2x 1TB...)

But anyway, using Seagate DiskWizard, a free tool, I migrated the bootable drive and the extra partition from the remaining 320GB to the 500GB, creating extra room in both partitions at the same time.

All thats left to do now is to plug up the other 500GB and select to mirror in RAID 1 if it'll let me :p

Also seems to be a problem with some of the RAM now too, so I'm having bad luck at the minute :(

EDIT:

I'm back up.

A RAID 1 is being created as I speak using the Intel Matrix Storage Console :D

I just have to sort out the RAM now. I'm running from only 1GB...

EDIT 2:

All fixed, and 3GB's RAM back up now too. Damn voltages :)
 
Back
Top Bottom