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How to rebuild RAID 0 after reinstall of Windows 7?

Tags:
  • Windows
  • NAS / RAID
  • Rebuild
  • Storage
  • Windows 7
Last response: in Storage
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September 15, 2014 3:11:03 PM

Hi All,

I'm looking for some help to rebuild my RAID 0 array after I resinstalled Windows 7.

I have a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 (rev3) mobo (AM3+). I have a Samsung 840 SSD (120GB) and 2 Seagate 2TB HDDs arranged in a RAID 0 array. Originally the OS was loaded on the SSD while data, files, docs etc were on the HDDs in a RAID 0. I've reinstalled Windows on the SSD, set the SATA controller to RAID in BIOS and installed the RAID drivers during Windows installation. However, once Windows had successfully installed and booted up the 2 HDDs aren't recognised as they were in the original RAID 0 array. BIOS recognises the HDDs as does disk manager in Windows. The RAID BIOS recognises the RAID array but the 2nd drive has failed (these drives are perfectly fine and I'm sure the data is still on them in working order). The 1st drive still has the MBR so I think it's just a case of getting the drives, SATA controller and Windows communicating properly.

Any ideas on how I can restore this?

All help appreciated and welcome.
Thanks
Gavin

More about : rebuild raid reinstall windows

a b G Storage
a b $ Windows 7
September 15, 2014 3:35:14 PM

Your issue is down at the raid controller level. Windows just sees the array as a hard drive.
For an onboard RAID controler like this, the RAID setup may be available from the BIOS setup screen or from another menu that you can enter during the boot process.
If the RAID controller thinks the second drive has failed, you have likely lost your data.
RAID 0 offers no protection from data loss and is in fact much more vulnerable than individual drives because you lose everything when one drive fails.
Being a software RAID solution on the motherboard, no other RAID controller will be able to read them either.

You can try initialising the drives again from the RAID menu to get functionality back.
Better to initialise them as individual drives though if you care in any way about data loss.
You should also have a backup of anything important too.
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