RAID 5 a HDD Has Failed

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buzznjackal

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Aug 9, 2015
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At inception I created a hardware RAID 5 array with 3 WD60EFRX drives on an ASUS H97I-PLUS board. Fast forward about one and a half years and now one drive has failed and I have to send it in for RMA. When I booted my computer though all the disk appear as "Non-RAID Disk". So what now?

My thinking is that when I get the drive back and plug it back in I can recreate the RAID 5 in the configuration utility and it should rebuild from there once I get into Windows and the Intel RST analyzes the drives, but I'm not sure. Also why does this happen? I thought RAID would allow you to still access the data even though one drive has failed. Am I doing something wrong here is there a better way to still access your data even though a drive has failed? I'm so confused right now.
 
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drtweak
If IRST supports a Hot Spare, i'm not sure if it does because well...i don't use Intel/Software RAID... LSI Chips all the way here...but if it does support Hot Spare BUY ANOTHER HARD DRIVE! Even if it sits there for another year or two IT WILL save your life in cases like this. When the one drive failes it will auto rebuild on that hot spare.

Also just chipping in. Yes Hardware > Software but honestly that is only for RAID 1,0,10. Doing a software RAID 5/6 can cause a lot of over head on the CPU. Having a dedicated RAID card with Cashe and a BBU will allow for much faster speeds.
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01111111

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Jun 7, 2016
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You should not see non-raid disk. You should see both remaining disks listed and the array as degraded. You didn't change any settings in BIOS did you? If your sata ports have been changed to AHCI the disks will appear individually. Have you been managing this from windows with the Intel RST software or through the BIOS utility?

You can import a foreign config but if you re-create a raid 5 from non member disks you will initialize the array and wipe all data.
 
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buzznjackal

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Aug 9, 2015
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Thank you so much for your reply. The RAID array is hardware created through bios configuration utility but managed in the operating system.
I've been having problems with my RAID array for quite some time now. It was sporadic and difficult to pin down the problem. The problem would just appear and go away. This one drive finally died so I'm hoping that is the culprit.
So when the drive died all the drives were identified as non-raid disk. So today I received the replacement drive. Booted up the Configuration Utility and created a new RAID array with all the same properties as the old RAID array. Booted into Windows and windows viewed it as a unformatted RAID 5 partition. I pulled power from the new hard drive and rebooted the system. Plugged the power back into the new drive and now the RAID 5 is rebuilding. Currently at 3%. Not sure if I will get everything back but that "Rebuilding" message at least puts me at ease for now.
 
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FireWire2

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Oct 30, 2006
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Just want to let you know, Motherboard RAID is NOT a hardware RAID. Let faces if the Motherboard is a hardware RAID and reliable one, then Adaptec. 3Ware, ATTO, HPT, Arece... they would be out of business already!

If you use RAID, do it right - Use a true Hardware RAID and learn how to maintenance it
 
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01111111

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Jun 7, 2016
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There's nothing wrong with a software raid either through the OS, or an Intel ICH10 chipset, hardware raid has more benefits but can actually be trickier to maintain. If Intel's raid setup wasn't reliable they also wouldn't include it on boards either...

The second part of that is correct, you must learn how to maintain a raid array before you just use one and plan on keeping valuable files on it. A disk failure should be simulated so you know what to do and how to do it, especially because all that data he had is GONE for sure. Or you can have a very good teacher.
 
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01111111

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Jun 7, 2016
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Right, well people create posts on a forum when there is an issue, not when everything is going well.

Out of curiosity what do you think the amount of on-board raid arrays in people's homes are compared to a higher cost dedicated solution 5:1, 10:1? I bet it's significantly higher.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Sep 17, 2012
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If IRST supports a Hot Spare, i'm not sure if it does because well...i don't use Intel/Software RAID... LSI Chips all the way here...but if it does support Hot Spare BUY ANOTHER HARD DRIVE! Even if it sits there for another year or two IT WILL save your life in cases like this. When the one drive failes it will auto rebuild on that hot spare.

Also just chipping in. Yes Hardware > Software but honestly that is only for RAID 1,0,10. Doing a software RAID 5/6 can cause a lot of over head on the CPU. Having a dedicated RAID card with Cashe and a BBU will allow for much faster speeds.
 
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