Strange Raid 1 error (Intel Matrix)

I don't completely understand: if only your mirror failed, shouldn't you be able to back-up all your data, then just rebuild the array? Also, why didn't your array's auto-correct capability kick in?

Neither do I =)

I have tried a lot of different things since my post and it seems like disk 1 got the whole MBR damaged and then mirrored this to the second drive.

So instead of protecting me I screw up 2 disks .... I'm still trying to recover files with different tools I found on the net but no positive result this far =/

I have read out the info from both drives separate and together now.
All I get is this

I 07/27/09 12:00:10 Active@ Partition Recovery DEMO Version
I 07/27/09 12:01:23 Device scan started on Hard Disk 2 (Intel Raid 1 Volume 232.9 GB)
I 07/27/09 12:01:23 Scanning Intel Raid 1 Volume ...
W 07/27/09 14:39:05 Bad (unreadable) sectors detected from 0 to 488390655 on Hard Disk 2.
I 07/27/09 14:39:05 Device scan completed [found 0 partitions and 0 files]


I mean how can drives in mirror go down like this at the same time?!
Any tools in particular that can fix unreadable sectors?
Thanks

I recently encountered a similar problem with a RAID 1 array (two 500GB WD Caviar) on Intel Matrix Storage [Intel(R) 82801GR/GH SATA RAID Controller] in Win XP x86 SP2. And I fixed it. Although I can't imagine that this will help Hellpatrol, perhaps someone else will find the information useful.

Basically, what I discovered is that Intel Matrix Storage Console may not correctly report which member of a RAID 1 array has failed. In my case, I was immediately suspicious because the console reported the array status as failed with one drive (port 0) failed and one drive (port 1) normal. With a single drive failure, I'd expect the array status to be degraded, not failed.

When I replaced the "failed" drive, the console reported the replacement (port 0) as a non-RAID drive, the old RAID member (port 1) as normal, and one RAID member as missing.

After some deliberation, I installed the "failed" drive (which had been port 0 in the Win XP box) in a server running Win Server 2008 x64. I found that all of the data was available, and that the drive seemed OK. Although, in copying the data, I did encounter a few folders with missing properties, the files therein seemed OK.

At that point, I went ahead and broke the RAID array in the Win XP box. After doing so, I could see the data. However, the machine bluescreened when I attempted a backup.

Upon installing the "normal" drive (which had been port 1 in the Win XP box) in the server, I could immediately hear that something was very wrong with the drive. When I attempted to copy from it, it whined very loudly, and the transfer rate dropped dramatically after a few minutes. FWIW, CPU utilization and page fault rate appeared inversely proportional to transfer rate. I gave up after a few GB.

FWIW, I suspect that using WD Caviar drives in a RAID array was a dumb idea. So far, the Win XP box seems fine with RAID 1 on two 1 TB WD RE3 drives. With any luck, it'll be retired before the new drives fail.