RAID Situation: Need Help from Experienced Techie

[ntrider]

I have 4 250GB hard drives in my self-built computer. I had unplugged them and replugged them back in, but I must have plugged at least one or two into the wrong drives. Some weird code ran for quite a while (I think it altered the registry.) I see now that I should have labeled the drives AND the cables first. (Live and learn.) Each pair of 2 (I don't know which 2) are a Raid 1 set. How do I figure out which one has my C: drive on it, and which one is its mirror? Same with the second set, but of course, different drive letter. Then, how do I get everything fixed? At this point, I can't get past the windows screen. Not sure if I should even have them all plugged in right now since I don't know which is which. Just plugging them in and running with it isn't working! Can anyone offer some real technical advice? Everywhere I ask I get lots of replies, like: Just plug 'em in and go; Didn't you take notes?; etc...

 

[choirbass]

you could simply chalk this up as a learning experience dealing with raid redundancy and desktops (aka, it is a bad idea if its not for a server that needs to be operational 24/7, eg, swapping mirrored hdds upon failure for minimum down time)...

(as much as you dont want to hear, yet again) you could simply just try plugging in each of the 4 drives into alternating sata ports until you find the correct configuration, no other way to tell without raid software that can identify the drives on its own...

the controllers bios should also indicate if the array is plugged in properly, you could use that as a guide to get it up and running again...

i can only hope that you had other external/networked backups if the array is corrupted and not recoverable... because even with raid, multiple regularly updated backups are essential (because what happens if the raid controller breaks? etc)

edit: just remembered... but even if only one of the raid 1 hdds are plugged in, your os hdd should still be bootable without problem... raid 1 isnt like raid 0, the primarily difference being that raid 1 can still function as a solo hdd (just without the added redundancy)... and if you are experiencing problems like youre saying (it isnt due to mismatching hdds i dont think)..

 

[blue68f100]

If you had a raid 1 sets. Plug one drive in at time and test with every port, then the next drive. once you find the bootable drive mark it. Then do it agian. A raid 1 drive should boot from either 1 of the 2 locations.

Live and learn. The first thing I do is mark the drive position and date. I also number the sleds.

 

[ntrider]

Thank you both for your comments so far. I hope to work on this over the long weekend. I'll report back!

ntrider