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6.6

Intel Matrix RAID10 degraded drive is not recognized

Asked by ptr727 in Disaster Recovery, Storage Technology, Windows Vista

Tags: Intel Matrix Storage Manager

I messed up my 4 drive RAID10 configuration, and now my system won't boot.

I have a Gigabyte EP45-DS3R motherboard with an intel ICH10R SATA RAID chipset.
I have 4 Seagate 500GB drives connected.
I configured 2 volumes, 120GB RAID10 boot volume, and 800GB data volume.
Vista x64 is installed on the boot volume, and the data volume is used for data files.

I was messing around with the BIOS settings, restore optimized defaults, and this changed the RAID option back to AHCI.
I rebooted to let the optimized defaults take effect, then changed the RAID option back to RAID.

After I rebooted this time the RAID manager reported that the two volumes were degraded, and it reported that disk0 was a non-raid disk, while disk1 to 3 were still reported as part of the two RAID10 volumes.

At this point I would expect the system to function correctly, with no data loss due to the RAID1 config, but without the benefit of RAID0.
Booting the system resulted in a fulure of a missing bootmanager file.

I would also have expected that by pressing Ctrl-I to enter the RAID BIOS config I would be able to add the non-raid disk as the missing disk.
Entering the BIOS gave me no options to add the non-RAID disk as the missing disk.

The Intel KB article states that on entering the Ctrl-I utility I will be prompted to add the drive, I am never prompted, and there are no options to do anything with drive0.
See:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-021017.htm
 
I booted the system from WinPE, and both volumes are present, bt strangely the boot volume shows up as drive D and the data volume as drive C. If the ntloader interprets the drives the same way, it may explain why the loader is reported as missing.

I booted from a Vista x64 DVD and seletec the repair option, no windows installations were detected.

This leaves me baffled:
1. Why did one boot into AHCI mode loose the RAID drive config and made disk0 a non-raid drive?
2. Why is the Intel RAID BIOS not showing me the dialog to join a disk as explained in the Intel KB?
3. Why would vista fail to boot if 3 out of 4 drives in a RAID10 is present and the volumes are just degraded?
4. The Intel KB on a failed RAID10 also mentions using the Windows RAID Storage Manager utility to reconfigure the drives, but if I can't boot, I can't run this utility.

And most importantly:
a. How do I get my system to boot again?
b. Why did this happen?
c. How do I prevent this from happening again?

Thanks
Pieter
[+][-]12/30/08 03:03 PM, ID: 23266966Author Comment

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[+][-]12/31/08 07:41 AM, ID: 23270586Accepted Solution

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About this solution

Zones: Disaster Recovery, Storage Technology, Windows Vista
Tags: Intel Matrix Storage Manager
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Solution Provided By: ptr727
Participating Experts: 0
Solution Grade: A
 
[+][-]12/31/08 07:44 AM, ID: 23270618Author Comment

Often, when Experts are collaborating with members who have asked questions, they will request additional information about the problem. Askers respond with an author comment like this one.

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