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General discussion

Intel RAID Problem / Questions

Nov 17, 2010 2:00AM PST

I just had a really weird problem occur.

I was cleaning dust out of my Win7x64 Asus P6T Deluxe V2 water-cooled system and refilling my coolant tank. To get the liquid level down, I turned on my system for a few seconds to turn the pump power on, then I turned power off. I didn't let the system get through BIOS bootup.

When I rebooted my system again, I got a "Hit F1 for Setup, F2 to load defaults" BIOS message, and my clock speed looked like it was set back to defaults.

Rather than hit either F1 or F2, I powered the system down again. When I rebooted once again, my system was set back to my normal configuration with my normal boosted CPU and memory speeds.

However, as the system bootup continued, I saw that the Intel RAID controller status showed my 1.5TB RAID5 array as "Degraded" and my 0.5TB RAID0 array as "Failed".

At first, I figured that I must have accidentally disconnected a SATA cable while messing around in the case. However ...

My system booted up successfully (And, boy, did THAT take a long time), and the Intel Matrix Storage Console shows all 3 hard drives as connected.

So, none of the cables got disconnected. And, the IMSC is currently rebuilding my RAID5 array, but my RAID0 drive does not show up in my Windows connected drives anymore (though, it shows up in the IMSC RAID tree).

Questions:

1) Did my resetting of my BIOS during startup cause the RAID corruption? Or, was it something else? My system never got to the point of accessing my hard drives during that first reset, so I am confused as to how this would have been the problem. I'd also like to think that the system is more robust: I have reset my system numerous times before in the middle of BIOS startup, and haven't seen this RAID corruption ever happen before.

2) Will the Intel Matrix Manager be able to recover my RAID0 data? It does show that option on the RAID0 array in the console, but I haven't enabled it yet - I want my primary RAID5 array to get fully rebuilt before I try messing with the RAID0 array.

Thanks,

AzJazz

Discussion is locked

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Yes I've seen that happen.
Nov 17, 2010 5:50AM PST

The uncertainty or probability of loss is not a sure thing. But it has happened. Sadly I find that most of the time the owner had no backups.

As to question 2, if you don't have a backup see if Intel has a support line and will answer that question. But I would set the BIOS proper and see if the Intel software will recover it. Then again, I have a backup copy.
Bob

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10 Hours have passed, and RAID5 @ 28%
Nov 17, 2010 11:31AM PST

If I lose the RAID0, it's not a huge loss. I install games and Virtual Machines on that drive, and I can just re-install there again. I have the source disks available, if necessary.

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Rebuild complete!
Nov 19, 2010 2:30PM PST

It took 39 hours. Yeesh!

After the RAID5 array was completely rebuilt in Win7, I just did a "Restore" on the RAID0 array in the Intel Matrix Manager Console. The RAID0 "Restore" took only 1 or 2 seconds.

When I rebooted my system, the RAID0 array was perfectly restored, with no data loss.

Whew.

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Whew
Nov 20, 2010 12:40AM PST

Thanks for the update. It took time and you let it do the work. Be sure to backup what you can't lose in the future.
Bob