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Problem with hardware RAID card

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  • Hardware
  • NAS / RAID
  • Storage
Last response: in Storage
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March 24, 2014 9:20:55 AM

Hi, been tearing my hair out over this for ages, hope someone can help me out. This is a problem which I've spent a lot of time, on and off, trying to sort, so I shall give a short version, so the problem is clear and not bogged down by detail, and a more detailed version.

Short version: my hardware raid card (Raidcore BC4852, pci/pci-x, 8-port, is not functioning correctly within windows in several pcs, in pci slots. Only the first 4 ports (0-3) are showing up within its proprietary software, although all ports, and attached drives, are recognised by its own bios, and it sees the array fine. I already have a 6-drive RAID5 setup on there with several terabytes of stuff which I would hate to lose. I merely wish to rescue the data to other drives, as storage is now cheap enough that I am happy to simply have it all duplicated on 2 sets of hard drives, which I can access via plug n play slots.

Long version:

I had a 10tb RAID5 array on my Raidcore BC4852 controller, 6x2tb drives. This worked for ages, first in an old Dell machine which I used purely as a data/media server, then I integrated it into a nice big case with a powerful PSU when a house move meant i had to consolidate my PCs into one. Each time, the pci-x card was fitted to a regular pci slot, meaning half the card just poked out past the slot. All worked well. About a year ago my motherboard died, and I replaced my whole mobo/cpu/ram, within the existing case. New mobo was an Asus PBH61 R2.0. All worked well for a few weeks, until one of my drives failed.

This is not normally a problem, just a case of replacing that drive and rebuilding the redundancy, but suddenly the proprietary software was acting up, the array went offline and it was showing randomly what drives were in place, never more than two or three of them at a time. However, this motherboard has a neat feature which allows you, from the BIOS, to access BIOS updates you may have downloaded to your existing hard drives. This continues to show the array as a large drive, and shows all folders and subfolders as they were when I last saw them (however, as it is only looking for very specific update files it does not list files with other extensions). The Raidcore proprietary software, running in windows 7, was then asking me to update the firmware on the card. This has proved impossible as I can't find any more updated firmware anywhere, although I have seen talk of a more updated version. The version running is RC-331-2008080.2. This version was also running fine on Windows 7 on that same motherboard for quite a while.

On that same motherboard I tried installing Windows server 2008, and windows server 2003 (to get over the <2tb logical drive issue), but still no joy, partly as the smbus controller for this motherboard does not have drivers for those OS's, and attempting to use XP/Vista drivers does not work as the drivers come in proprietary .exe files which refuse to work on anything but their designated OS. I have also, potentially foolishly, played around with a lot of BIOS settings on both motherboard and raid card, often not entirely sure what I was doing.

I then got hold, from a friend, of an old setup he had, which had a Gigabyte M615ME-S2L board, which is 64-bit. This showed some improvement, under Win Server 2003, in that it at least stabilised which drives it could see, being any drives connected to ports 0-3. I tried messing about with all sorts of Bios configurations on both mobo and raidcard, but to no avail. I did wonder if it was only spotting half the channels as it was connected to a 64-bit mobo, but only to a 32-bit pci slot, so I obtained another old pc, this with an Asus A7N8X 32-bit motherboard, but it was the same old story, only slots 0-3 recognised within Windows, but all drives, including the failed drive, recognised within the card's own bios.

I have of course experimented with swapping the drives to different ports on the card etc, but again, the bios recognises each drive no matter which slot it is in, but the Raidcore software will only recognise anything in slots 0-3.

So really I'm wondering if anyone has encountered problems like this before. Is it likely to be a hardware failure of the Raid card, disguised by the fact that it seems to recognise all slots from its BIOS? In which case, would tracking down the exact same card on Ebay save my data? What would seem to point away from this is the fact that the directory structure within the logical drive seems intact when delved into via the motherboard's BIOS update feature.

Is there some simple fix which experts can tell me about immediately? Does anyone have a more recent firmware for this card, which has been unsupported for years? Would linux somehow possibly help? Sorry if it all seems a bit woolly, I've had a very busy year of it, and have often just left this problem aside, returning to it sporadically for another soul-crushing bout of pointless endeavour. I am clearly no great expert, I just learn what I need to when I need to to get by, often forgetting a lot of it after. When/if I have saved my data I intend to simplify, big-time.

Thanks for any help, this data needs rescuing and this card needs to find its way to the bin!

More about : problem hardware raid card

a b G Storage
March 24, 2014 12:24:04 PM

What kind of drives were you using?
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a c 971 G Storage
March 24, 2014 7:42:27 PM

Are the card firmware version and the console's version the same? It doesn't sound like they are and they need to be.
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March 25, 2014 9:18:06 AM

Tyr0d: 4 WD caviare and 2 Samsung (one of which has failed). They are not specialist RAID drives I'm afraid, but currently 5 of them are ok, which puts the array in Critical state, as the card itself reports from its BIOS. Once (if) I have retrieved the data, I'm saying goodbye to the array itself.

popatim: both the firmware and the console are version RC-331-2008080.2. I think Windows 7 was asking me to update firmware, but I'm really not sure why. I have tried to locate a more recent console/firmware package, I have seen talk of one, but have had no luck. It was working perfectly well on windows 7 on that motherboard before one of the drives failed.

Thanks so much for responding by the way!
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a b G Storage
March 25, 2014 9:39:02 AM

Dan Fardell said:
Tyr0d: 4 WD caviare and 2 Samsung (one of which has failed). They are not specialist RAID drives I'm afraid, but currently 5 of them are ok, which puts the array in Critical state, as the card itself reports from its BIOS. Once (if) I have retrieved the data, I'm saying goodbye to the array itself.

popatim: both the firmware and the console are version RC-331-2008080.2. I think Windows 7 was asking me to update firmware, but I'm really not sure why. I have tried to locate a more recent console/firmware package, I have seen talk of one, but have had no luck. It was working perfectly well on windows 7 on that motherboard before one of the drives failed.

Thanks so much for responding by the way!


Consumer drives in a 10TB RAID5 with at least 1 failed drive and controller/firmware problems.

I would seriously consider sending this to a professional lab, but at the very least...
make images of all the drives you can first and work with those images to attempt a manual rebuild.

Any changes to the drives and any attempts at reconfiguring/rebuilding the RAID are highly likely to cause some unrecoverable data loss at this point, particularly considering you don't know the condition of each drive and the condition of the parity structure.
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