RAID 5 Critical disk failed or not respoding

[dalin300]

Hi,
This is the first time I have had to post a problem on a forum in an attempt to find an answer. I apologize if I am not using the proper etiquette. Also if there is another post on this problem I will be happy to be redirected to it.
My problem is with a RAID 5 array. I just built a new machine for home and gaming. Here are the components.

ASUS Crosshair III Formula AM3 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core
CORSAIR DOMINATOR-GT 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
CORSAIR CMPSU-850HX 850W ATX12V 2.3 / EPS12V 2.91 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X 100269VXLE Radeon HD 4890 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
3x Western Digital WD800HLFS 80 GB 10,000 RPM Velociraptor hard drives
2x Western Digital 500 GB hard drives
Windows 7 64 bit Professional

I created the RAID 5 with the 3 Velociraptor drives during the install of windows using the ASUS RAID drivers on a thumb drive and the 2 500 gig drives as single disc storage. Everything worked fine for about two weeks. Then during boot up while it scans for drives it gives me a warning message.

ID Mode LD Size Track-Mapping Status
01 2+1 RAID 5 157.99G 19209/255/63 Critical

Port Device Name
3 WD800HLFS-75G6U1 <S.M.A.R.T. Health> <Single Disk 03>
4 ST3500418AS <S.M.A.R.T. Health> <Single Disk 04>
5 ST3500418AS <S.M.A.R.T. Health> <Single Disk 05>

Problem is detected with Array : 1
Critical Status :
A disk member of an array has failed or is not responding.
Please refer to your AMD User Manual for further details.

Press <Ctrl-F> to enter RAID option ROM Utility.

So I know it see's the original drive that was in the Array which is on port 3 and is now a single disk. I go into the RAID option menu where I first created the Array. I can view drive assignments and it shows all the drives in the machine. The two raptors that are still in the array are assigned LD 1-1 and 1-2. Then the third is listed as a single disk as well as the two 500 gig hard drives. I can go into define LD and see the Array. I can select the Array and view it. It shows the two 80 gig drives then
? : ? failed or disconnected.

Obviously all the drives are read the current RAID is functional and working as I can get into Windows and do everything as normal. My question is what can I do to get the RAID fully functional again? I would like to avoid re-installing the operating system if at all possible. Can I just delete and rebuild the RAID without any problems? I have borrorwed another Velociraptor drive so I can replace one and see if that works. If I need to do that how do I identify the problem drive and will I need to do anything to replace it?

Thank you in advance for any help that you can give me.

 

[saint19]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum

Does the 3 drives of the RAID 5 array online in the disk manager?

 

[dalin300]

Hi newcomer and welcome to the Tom's hardware forum

Does the 3 drives of the RAID 5 array online in the disk manager?

Thanks for the welcome and for responding to my post.

I don't know why I didn't think of that. When I opened disk management it popped up "you must initialize a disk before loigical disk manager can access it". So I initialized it and rebooted hoping that fixed it, but no. Then I checked disk management again it said the drive was unallocated. I then formated it and rebooted again hoping that it would find it, but again no. So disc management recognized the two 80 GB drives as a single drive at 147.05 GB drive, and the third one as a single 74.50 GB drive. It shows up as healthy and I can use it just like a normal storage drive.

 

[saint19]

Select the 147.05GB drive, right click and repair array. Remember that you must convert the other 74.50GB disk to dinamic before repair the RAID 5.

 

[dalin300]

Ok I converted the the 74.50 GB disk to dynamic. I right click on the 147.05 GB drive and the only options I get are:

Open
Explore
Mark Partition as Active
Change Drive Letters and Paths
Format (greyed out)
Extend Volume (greyed out)
Shrink Volume
Add Mirror (greyed out)
Delete Volume (greyed out)
Properties
Help

If I right click on Disk 0, which is the 147.05 GB drive I get:

New Spanned Volume (greyed out)
New Stripped Volume (greyed out)
New Mirrored Volume (greyed out)
New Raid-5 Volume (greyed out)
Convert to Dynamic Disk
Convert to GPT Disk (greyed out)
Offline (greyed out)
Properties
Help

 

[saint19]

Ok I converted the the 74.50 GB disk to dynamic. I right click on the 147.05 GB drive and the only options I get are:

Open
Explore
Mark Partition as Active
Change Drive Letters and Paths
Format (greyed out)
Extend Volume (greyed out)
Shrink Volume
Add Mirror (greyed out)
Delete Volume (greyed out)
Properties
Help

If I right click on Disk 0, which is the 147.05 GB drive I get:

New Spanned Volume (greyed out)
New Stripped Volume (greyed out)
New Mirrored Volume (greyed out)
New Raid-5 Volume (greyed out)
Convert to Dynamic Disk
Convert to GPT Disk (greyed out)
Offline (greyed out)
Properties
Help

---

That's strange. Try with this

 

[dalin300]

I installed and ran the program that you suggested. When I did that I get this http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w101/dalin300/Raidproblem.jpg
Maybe you can help me interpret it and what I should do. I don't know why it has the AMD 2+1 Disk RAID5, as well as the WDC WD800JLFS, and the Dynamic Disk-01. Is there any way I can find out what the damaged device is? If it is the problem with the RAID why can I access it and use it like normal?

Thanks

 

[saint19]

OK, select the AMD 2+1 disk RAID 5 and the other 74.51GB, this 74.51GB is dynamic 'cause a RAID only can be created with dynamic disk. Maybe the disk fail, but this still is dynamic.

 

[dalin300]

Well no matter what combination of available disks I use I get either a "Warning! Virtual Disk Array must contain the same type objects. Please select either dynamic partitions or physical devices." or "Warning! RAID5 Virual Disk Array must contain at least three disks!" Does it matter that I created this RAID using the motherboard RAID configurator? Can I just recreate the RAID using that or do i have to re-install the operation system? which I really don't want to do.

 

[saint19]

Try the repair array from the RAID options of the RAID software of your mobo.

 

[dalin300]

I looked everywhere the only options are to view and existing raid, create a new raid, delete an existing raid, or erase a hard drive. I'm thinking of trying to replace the drive that's not joining the raid. I just don't know how to figure out exactly which drive it is. I downloaded the Western digital hard drive tester but it didn't work. I also tried another hard drive tester and none of them came up with an error.

Any other ideas?

 

[Guest]

I looked everywhere the only options are to view and existing raid, create a new raid, delete an existing raid, or erase a hard drive. I'm thinking of trying to replace the drive that's not joining the raid. I just don't know how to figure out exactly which drive it is. I downloaded the Western digital hard drive tester but it didn't work. I also tried another hard drive tester and none of them came up with an error.

Any other ideas?

Dalin .. did you ever resolve this issue. I have the same issue.

 

[sub mesa]

May i ask why you opted to use RAID5 on your three Velociraptors? As i understand you're using the AMD RAID drivers to use RAID5? Those are of pretty low quality.

My point is, now that your system is still new, you can make drastic changes which will be more painful if you decide to do this at a later time when you got things already running. Perhaps you should run a single velociraptor as system disk, and use Windows software RAID0 on the other two, then use larger preferably 5400rpm drives as backup solution.

 

[dalin300]

Dalin .. did you ever resolve this issue. I have the same issue.

No I have not resolved the issue. I heard from a friend that there is an issue with the velociraptor's and raid, and supposedly there is some software out there to fix it, but I have not looked into it.

 

[dalin300]

May i ask why you opted to use RAID5 on your three Velociraptors? As i understand you're using the AMD RAID drivers to use RAID5? Those are of pretty low quality.

My point is, now that your system is still new, you can make drastic changes which will be more painful if you decide to do this at a later time when you got things already running. Perhaps you should run a single velociraptor as system disk, and use Windows software RAID0 on the other two, then use larger preferably 5400rpm drives as backup solution.

I had three velociraptor drives and I liked the idea of redundancy mixed with performance. But now I am having other problems anyway so I will have to re-install windows anyway.

 

[th3fro6]

No I have not resolved the issue. I heard from a friend that there is an issue with the velociraptor's and raid, and supposedly there is some software out there to fix it, but I have not looked into it.

Could it be the TLER of the raptors?

 

[saint19]

This's a old thread please don't response to that.