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Rowby GorenFlag for United States of America

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Sata Raid Not Detected. It's showing in Raid configuration - but not in Bios or in WIndows 7

Hi

I have a windows 7 Professional 64 bit computer. WIth ASUS P6X58D Premium - LGA 1366 - X58 - DDR3 - USB 3.0 SATA 6 Gb/s - ATX Motherboard     My raid controller is Areca Technology Corporation ARC-1680D-IX 12-ports SAS RAID Controller ARC-1680D-IX-12

All was working fine until I decided to add a hard drive (not to the raid, but just another hard drive.)  At first it still worked, but at some point the raid stopped working.  I have since removed that hard drive and am concentrating on getting the Raid back working.

The Areca raid configuration software is seeing the raid.  But when I go into the Windows motherboard BIOS The Sata for the raid is "Not Detected".  I have 4 hard drives witch create the raid.

Looking for some help here in troubleshooting this.

To help I did some screen captures and put into a little 1 and a half minute video.  I may submit the video to the Oscars (under "Most Boring" category) -- and if It wins I'll be sure to thank you on the Oscar Night broadcast.
   Here's the link Video screencast.
Rowby

P.S..  I know I misspelled  Areca  in my little video... :)
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David Johnson, CD
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where did you plug in the new drive?  Onto the motherboard I hope and not into the raid controller.  You will need the raid controllers driver for windows to see it.. it will NOT show up in your bios ever.  you have to use ITS built in bios utility
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ASKER

Hi David

Thanks for helping me in my troubleshooting.

At the moment I have only 1 drive -- the "C" operating system drive.  The other new drive that was a "D"and I removed it after I ran into this issue.  

The "C" drive is connected via a a cable to the motherboard.  Not to the raid controller.
Attached are some screen shots of some of the screens in the Areca Raid controller.  I am pretty sure the raid controller is properly set up -- that is,you can see the 4 hard drives in the Areca Raid controller.  

But it's not showing up in windows -- I still see only the "C: drive.

Rowby
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have you added the driver for the raid controller to windows?
Hi David,


WIndows says the driver is installed.  And says it's uptodate.  However I will go to Areca and make sure I have the latest version, but I'm pretty sture I alrady hav it.

see attachedUser generated image
if you go into diskmgmt.msc then it should pick up the drive and you may have to put it online and assign it a drive letter
Hi David...

Interesting.  I think you are right....


Take a look at this video screencast.   I think we are getting closer.   Including assigning it a drive letter, etc.Disk management

Rowby
I think that error you see in the video is probably a reminent of when I tried to add that second “D”drive yesterday.

I think I should delete all but "C" in the partition manager.   And then see what windows brings up.    (Drive "C"is an independent hard drive. not connected to  the raid or anything other than the motherboard.)     After I do that I bet a reboot will see everything back to normal :)

I await your thoughts :)

Rowby
is disk 1 your RAID?  And Disk 2 the new drive?
Disk 1 doesn't have a partition table and I couldn't see the size of Disk 2
Hi.  Here's an update.  I unplugged and plugged back in my raid cable -- and no longer have that I.O. error showing when I opened the partition manager.  There is no more Disk 2.  

So here's the latest.

Drive 0 is Drive C:.  Plugged into Motherboard.  (Windows 7 Professional operating system)

Drive 1 is the Raid.   The raid consists of 4 Two TB hard drives.  4 x 2= 8 TB for the raid.  (controlled by Areca ARC 1680d card)

See the below screen capture.

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Is the new drive also plugged into one of the SATA ports on the motherboard?

You have to partition and format the RAID drive.
Hi

The Drive called New 2015 OS (C:)  is not a part of the raid and is connected only to the motherboard.

The Disk 1  Drive is the raid and it is only connected to the Areca raid card.

I would prefer not to have partition and format the Raid drive because I have files on it.   The Raid was working a couple of days ago, so I would prefer not to reformat it.  

Is there a way to "just"assign a drive "letter"and make it work again. I'm sure your answer is "nope".   But thought i would ask.

Rowby
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David Johnson, CD
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The additional drive was an Solid state drive that i wanted to use as a storage drive.  I removed it because I found the issue with the raid.  I figured I would deal with the solid state drive at a future time, so I removed it.  

Rowby
are the drives in the RAID array (assuming RAID5) in the exact order that they were when it was working?  The RAID is not showing degraded or rebuilding?
The raid is in the exact same order.  They are screwed into place.  The cables are the same.  I have no warnings  about rebuilding or degraded.     I'll double check that all of the cables are reseated and report back.

Rowby
User generated imageHi David,

Looked at Raid controller and the read is healthy.   Are we 100 percent sure that the Asus motherboard showing Sata 1, 2 ,3, and 4 "Not detected" is okay?

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Rowby
Guessing OS drive plugged into Marvel controller #7 in picture
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Hmmm.   Interesting.   Will check that.
Still working on your last comment.  But thought I'd upload this -- from the raid controller manual.   It has nothing to do with your most recent comment -- and  I'm sure it's nothing new to you... User generated image
Hi David
Here's a photo of both the raid card and the motherboard.  It appears that both cable(s) are in the right connection.
User generated imageRowby
HI David

I did a youtube search for this motherboard (I was trying to find out where to reset the bios)  

And came across this video.  I see that in this video the Sata's are "recognizing" the hard drives.  In my case all my raid drives are "not recognized".   But maybe that's because they are raid drives and not regular drives.

In any case I'm going to sleep on this.  Maybe an idea will come up -- or maybe I'll just have to partition and format the raid. :)

https://youtu.be/avY_ayd1Rr4
the drives in your raid card will NEVER show up on the BIOS since all the bios knows about are the ports on the motherboard. The grey slots  are the marvel controllers slots and on my system p8Z68Deluxe they don't show up in the sata configuration which only shows the 6 Intel SATA slots.
Got it!   Thanks!   I'll sleep on all of this.

It looks like I'll have to reinitialize the raid.   I do have my main content backed up.  It's some old stuff on that drive that I probably don't really need anymore.

Rowby
R Studio looks like an interesting solution to recover some of my files. http://www.r-tt.com/BuyOnLine.shtml

And just looking at https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

Based on my situation do you recommend one over the other.

Rowby
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Wow.  Downloaded Get Data Back -- and in 10 seconds I see all the folders and data from that "unallocated" raid.

After I pay for it can I just extract the folders I need onto a backup drive?  Or do I need to create a complete backup of the entire raid.  I’m using the Simple version.

For now I just need a few folders and would prefer to do a complete restore of the raid at a later date.

Of course I can read the instructions, but I thought I'd ask here -- and perhaps get some tips.  

But it looks really simple and brainless!

Rowby
Wowza!

Getdataback SImple did exactly what I needed -- slowed me to copy just a couple folders I needed.  I'll do a complete raid repair later this week.

In meantime I'm keeping this question open for a day or so (or more) in case anything comes up.

Thanks!  

Rowby
take your time  - and keep us posted
Thanks David and John.

Learned a lot — and using Getdataback.   It was worth going through all this hassle to have found out about  Getdatwback.

Riwby