Am I the only one who has done this?

[TNTTNT]

Hi,

I just finished a new build and thought it wise to update bios on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5. The PC was clean with no software installed other than drivers and Vista 64bit.

I had 2 drives installed under RAID 1, controlled by the Intel controller. When the machine restarted the bios went to default set up and non raid The machine booted to windows, and the Intel software reported a missing disk. No matter what I did the machine would not restore the array because the second disk was marked as a system disk.

In the end I deleted the array and had to do a full re-install of Vista. Thank god It wasn't a year on and I had installed numerous apps, data and programs, so re-install was no hardship.

Does Intel RAID 1 fail often? You could argue in this case Intel RAID didn't fail and the dumb arse updating the bios should have got into bios before reboot, but it seems a thin line to failure to me.

 

[alexp999]

Uh, I dont think the Raid array ever failed, all you had to do was go into the bios following the flash and set the HDD's up in RAID mode again.

 

[TNTTNT]

I know what you mean, but if it slipped the mind you only have a few seconds to get to the bios. It seems a small margin for the disk to fall out of the array.

I suppose I am asking if RAID1 is quite sturdy and foolproof normally (Dumb arse proof in this example). Do disk fall out of sync often?

 

[alexp999]

EDIT:

Take that back, was forgetting it was RAID 1 array. Damn that is unfortunate.

At least you will know next time. Though it might be safer not to install the OS on a RAID 1 array that way, you are more likely to be able to put the array back together

 

[TNTTNT]

I am having some doubts about putting OS on RAID 1. The reason I did it was to always have a bootable hard drive, if one drive degraded, the system could always boot off the good one. I have bought a spare 500gb Seagate, so if a OS disk breaks, I can slip in a new one and rebuild.

That's the theory, but one problem in less than a week is making me wonder.

 

[newtekie1]

I've had this happen. I even let it boot into Windows using just the single disk. I had no problem simply restarting, and going into the RAID BIOS setup and putting the second disk back in the array. The RAID BIOS will not care what is on the second disk, it will wipe it and rebuild the array(which does takes some time, but you can continue to use the computer while it is going on, you just won't be protected if the drive that it is rebuilding from dies).

You should also be aware that this is going to happen any time you reset the CMOS on the motherboard, and can also happen if you push overclocks to high(due to the RAID controller becoming unstable).

 

[TNTTNT]

Thanks for the tips on overclocking and CMOS reset. I would not have thought of these in advance.

I had a real problem when the disk fell out of array. Intel RAID said disk was missing, with the second disk displayed as non raid. When I tried rebuiding to this disk, I got the message saying the disk was either damaged, the wrong capacity or a system disk. No matter how hard I tried, no luck.

I tried in Intel RAID bios, but got the same message.

I did a quick format of second disk, but same message. The same with a full disk format.

Finally I went into RAID BIOS and deleted the array, wiping the disk in the process. I re-installed the array and Vista.

Does anyone know the array couldn't be rebuilt and what I can do next time to avoid a full system re-install?

 

[newtekie1]

You might have had to re-initialize the second disk before using it in the array, this should completely wipe it.

 

[TNTTNT]

I think I did re-initialise in Disk Management, with no success. I'm working from memory, and I am about 80% I re-initialised.

It was really wierd.

 

[newtekie1]

I think there is an option in the RAID bios to reinitialize also.