RAID 1 Rebuilt in correctly on ICH10R - data lost?

A few days ago I got a blue screen stop error, the exact details of which I can't recall off the top of my head, but the error was 0x00000007, and the file was ia???V.sys - which said it had something to do with the storage controller or something. After I rebooted, the RAID 1 array was completely gone. The drives were not even detected or listed by the array manager. Rebooting seeral times and nothing changed. I left the computer on for awhile and somehow the drives were back online when I came back. My data was there and all. I rebooted and the RAID 1 was listed as "rebuilding". I logged in, my data was still there, and the intel manager within the OS told me the RAID was being rebuilt.



Great! I thought. I let it run over night, and when I checked this morning, I had a message "the drive must be formated before it can be used" 0-0



I immediately shutdown. Is there any chance my data is still on at least one of the drives? Can I recover it with a utility like TestDisk?



Not sure I really want to know the answer.

Things are not going so well so a little more information. After pulling both disks, I connected the first disk in the array and restarted, it showed fine, array showed as failed. I connected both disks, and they both appeared and the array started rebuilding.

Now after the first time I tried this, I come back and there is a message "A volume is inaccessible, it needs to be restored or a hard drive is missing." I open the manager and sure enough, the second disk isn't listed. I shutdown, unplug the second drive, restart, shutdown, plug it back in and the raid is rebuilding again. This time after letting it go for hours again, I get the same message, but the drive is listed as failed. I pulled the drive and connected it to a usb reader, ran disk tools in Windows 7 to check for file system errors and bad sectors. Both tests were clean.

Should I just format the drive and rebuild the array from the one good disk? Is there something else I should run on the disk to check for errors first?

One more detail that might be important. The array was originally built from the intel bios, and the intel raid manager was not installed yet. I didn't install the manager until after the first time the rebuild failed and told me to reformat.

I have already pulled the data I really need off the drives in case I end up losing it all some how. I'm tempted now to just run without a RAID (for my storage anyways) and use backup software to backup to the second disk.

Thanks for the help

They each certainly have their advantages, but on a forum such as this I would certainly think *someone* knows a little bit about RAID 1.

Maybe I should ask some more specific questions:

1) Could this issue be due to actual drive failure? Cause if so I am wasting my time trying to rebuild it. So far the drive seems fine. Maybe the controller is having issues?
2) Could installing the intel manager software after the fact cause more issues?
3) Can I just format the 2nd drive and rebuild the raid, or do I have to remove it from the array, then add it again?

Thanks Wuzy I'll see if I can find that post. ATM I'm wondering if Windows7 is shutting down my disks after so many hours of inactivity, and then the rebuild fails. Most of the time I rebuild the disks have completely disappeared. I've changed that setting and I'll try again tonight. I'll look into the drivers/bios again too.