[Stuart Wright]

Hi folks,
I have an Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 system and I've had to do a fresh Windows 7 Pro install on a new C drive.
Problem is that Windows doesn't see the raided D drive (2 x WD 1TB in a mirror).
The drives are seen ok and work fine using the dodgy old C drive (which keeps blue screening and booting with CHKDSK which finds more corrupted stuff every time - that's 100% failure on 2 of these Crucial 128Gb SSDs).
I have installed all the drivers from the Asus website (SATA, Chipset, USB etc.).
So do I have to do another Windows 7 install but load the SATA drivers first? Which I would rather not do.
Or can I load the driver somehow?

Thanks

[Stuart Wright]

Thanks fo the reply.

Originally Posted by xyzbird

Assuming you have installed new drives, you need to boot and catch the Intel Control I sequence and reset the raid 1 mirror settings. Warnings will be given that all data will be lost.

What do you mean by reset? Will the data be lost?
Can't afford to lose the data. There's 450Gigs worth, 15 hours to copy to another disk.

Originally Posted by xyzbird

Reboot again and press the delete key to get into the Asus bios. Go into Advanced and set sata configuration to raid.

Sata configuration is set to AHCI throughout. Should I change it from that to RAID at this point? When do I change it back?

Originally Posted by xyzbird

Boot again with the Windows installation DVD. Load all the Asus drivers as soon as the operating system is running (best to use the Asus motherboard CD if you have it as it knows what drivers that particular board needs - sometimes some of the Asus website downloads don't always work.

I have the original CD, but it somehow got snapped in half, so downloading the drivers from Asus is my only option.

Originally Posted by xyzbird

Might be advisable to reflash to the latest bios but you may have to go into the bios Advanced setting again for the sata settings. You will need to read the Asus website bios installation details as the Intel Raid may need updating as well).

I don't want to reflash the bios. The current bios works fine with the knackered SSD drive.

[maddogb]

hardware raid and ahci are two different things, the bios needs to be set so that the appropriate controller chip the raid array is connected to is running in raid mode not ahci

[maddogb]

looking at this a bit deeper it appears your board has two controllers the marvel 6GBs(navy blue connectors) and the intel 6GBs(blue connectors) with the intel also has 3GBs on grey connectors.
If you have disconnected these drives they will need to go back on the same controllers as when the raid was set up or the drives may not be recognised as a RAID pair, then make sure the bios entry for that controller is set to raid not ahci.

[Stuart Wright]

The problem was that I didn't know about the Areca raid controller used in the computer.
As soon as I installed the drivers for that, everything worked, without a reboot.
Thanks for your help.

[larkone]

Why bother running RAID in a non-commercial environment. RAID is great for high availability environments in data centres, in that failures are recovered quickly when a disk fails - providing you have another similar spare disk to rebuild your data on to. The downside of RAID is that both disks are usually spinning most of the time and using disks wears them out. Also there are a lot of things that can take out a RAID array (power failure, virus, controller issues, driver issues etc.) and you can lose all of your data. Which is why RAID is no substitute for a backup - ever. You are already experiencing issues in just setting up the RAID on your machine which should be a warning. Many years in IT has taught me not to trust RAID and I have seen very experienced IT staff suffer at the hands of a corrupted data centre RAID array that has destroyed all of the data and resulted in a complete re-build from backups that has taken days.

A suggestion - use one WD disk as your live disk and the other as the backup drive - preferably as an external drive. The backup can be set to just backup incremental changes so you only have to copy the main data once and then after that the backup will be very small. Also this drive will only be on when you are backing up which reduces wear and tear and will give it a longer life than the live drive giving you much more piece of mind in the long run. If the main disk fails or gets corrupted for any reason you have another copy external to your machine that will have escaped the problems affecting the internal disk. Personally, if the data is that important, I would have at least two external backup drives.

[maddogb]

^^pfft
not in a commercial environment but really need my machine and would not be without my raid 1+0 array, plus the performance gains of a stripped raid array have many non commercial benefits, ie gaming and video editing
RAID is not abc simple but still think your tirade is way off base there

[larkone]

Not a tirade but the result of many lessons learnt working in commercial IT. You have a much more resilient version of RAID but the OP is only running two drives which limits its effectiveness in both resilience and speed from the start and is not considered a safe way of storing data.

[maddogb]

Originally Posted by larkone

Not a tirade but the result of many lessons learnt working in commercial IT. You have a much more resilient version of RAID but the OP is only running two drives which limits its effectiveness in both resilience and speed from the start and is not considered a safe way of storing data.

you can't blame the hardware or the systems for incorrect implementation , cant see where stuart states what config his array is in so for all we know its mirrored which protects his data from single drive failure, job done.

[larkone]

Originally Posted by maddogb

you can't blame the hardware or the systems for incorrect implementation , cant see where stuart states what config his array is in so for all we know its mirrored which protects his data from single drive failure, job done.

Quote from Staurts post: Problem is that Windows doesn't see the raided D drive (2 x WD 1TB in a mirror).

This setup protects if one drive fails but does not protect both drives from a controller failure, power failure whilst writing data, virus corruption, driver failure - the list goes on. A two drive mirror means both discs are spinning all of the time as well so the total life expectancy is the same which also means if they came from the same batch and have any faults that they are likely to fail at the same time.

I have been there and suffered the pain in some serious setups configured by knowledgeable people supported by the manufacturers and still seen catastrophic failures resulting in the loss of all of the data.

You need to read this if you still believe RAID is a 100% secure.
RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Common RAID Server Failure Types and Causes

[maddogb]

not really sure where u are going with this, no substitute for backup? in my experience those that go for raid arrays or trust a pro to set things up for them are usually better at having backups handy than people who rely on single drives
the rest is not really an argument m8, controller failure is not normally an issue, suffered that a few times and data off mirrored drives setup by a knowledgeable person can usually be got at no problem when fitted into another system.
Power failure can take out whole systems leaving data inaccessible in all forms so again no argument against raid usage
A virus which may actually infect your backups as well, only due diligence works there and it doesn't matter how many drives and backups you have if your so careless you are prone to viral infection.
you seem to have a very lopsided view of raid, its a tool to enable jobs to be done which can't be achieved with a single drive configuration. that's all.

[larkone]

OK if that is your view then good luck - you need it

[maddogb]

when one of my drives popped recently it took me less than 1 min to be back in operation, 24 hrs later i was protected again within an hour of fitting the replacement drive from amazon all with superior performance than the equivalent single drive config.
not down to luck but knowledge and care, and the last statement in my previous post about raid vs single drive is fact, not opinion or wiki quotes