Help! - RAID 1 Rebuild Prevents Windows from Booting

Eggz

Distinguished
This is a real predicament, and I hope that someone on here can please help.

I've had two HDDs working for a couple months working in a RAID 1, and it's been great for mass storage (my OS is on an SSD). Then I added a new SATA device (optical drive), which caused one of the HDDs in the RAID to disappear. It turned out that moving the new device to a different SATA plug fixed that problem. After the second HDD reappeared, the RAID's status both at post and within IRST in Windows 8.1 Pro was marked as "Degraded."

Within 10 seconds of starting to rebuild the RAID, the OS froze entirely. I reset the computer. At post the RAID's status is now marked as "Rebuild." But as soon as post completes to the point where the OS would normally start to boot, all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left.

This is terrible! I can't use this computer at all anymore.

I've tried all of the following with no luck: * resetting the BIOS back to factory settings, *unplugging the drives, *plugging them back in, *trying to set the SATA settings in BIOS to AHCI, disconnecting the optical drive, and letting the black screen sit for up to 30 minutes.

Please help!
 

Eggz

Distinguished
No that didn't work at all. I actually kind of got it working by doing a repair from bootable media, but the OS had so many little problems that I'm just going to format all of the drives (the SSD and both HDDs) to start fresh.

I backed up the RAID onto another drive, so everything's intact. The annoying thing is that I just fresh installed the OS. For some reason the RAID issue destroyed the installation. If I get it up and running in good shape again, I am definitely going to image the SSD immediately so this won't be as time consuming of an issue in the future.

As I go through, I'll keep this thread posted. I saw similar things happening, so it may be useful for people in the future to have this documents. I'm also guessing I might need to reach out to the community here for help somewhere along the way.

Thanks for replying!
 
haha yea when in doubt just start from scrach. yea i don't like the Intel Raid. Too many issues in the past. I always perfer a good RAID Card.

But the Imaging the OS is a good Idea. I do the same thing for me. Once i get it all up and running and my basic programs installed I make an image so when i go to reinstall windows i just restore the image.
 

Eggz

Distinguished
Yeah, I was actually on my way to doing that, but the RAID issue screwed up the OS before I had a chance.

As for the original issue, I think I found the culprit. There was a broken SATA cable attached to one of the drives. The vibrations from the drive must have misaligned it just enough for the thing to disconnect at the beginning of the rebuild process. I'm not sure how that made the computer forget entirely where Windows was installed (esp. because it was on another drive entirely), but I hope I can get to the imaging stage this time around.
 
Yea that just seems weird, but then computers are 1) man made and everything man made breaks sooner or later and 2) these computers are so complex that small weird stuff like that can screw up everything. I've seen a lot of weird stuff happen to PCs