A drive in raid 0 volume is failing.

[jackson28]

I was playing a game and then it froze on me. I could not ctrl-alt-delete so I hold onto the power button till it turn off. Once it rebooted, a screen popped up with the message "A drive in raid 0 volume is failing. Try to back up immediately."

As of now, I am backing up the files and folder that are important. In the mean time, what can I do?

 

[aford10]

You can repair a degraded array without completely rebuilding it. If you haven't done so, it may be a good idea, when you're done backing up your files.

 

[jackson28]

This is my first computer that I used a RAID setup on so I do not know how to fix it. I am sorry to bother you but do you know the steps needed or if you can direct me to a website.

 

[jackson28]

This is the screenshot I took.

 

[aford10]

You would need to boot into the RAID BIOS. You should see the keystroke on startup to access it.

It's been a while since I've had to do this, so bare with me.....

Once you're in the RAID BIOS, you should see your array. It will have it's health status next to it. You can choose your array, and you should see an option to repair it. You just don't want to delete the existing array. If you do, you will lose everything on it.

 

[jackson28]

I guess you can only repair/rebuild in RAID 1. I was cannot select any option other than to create a volume, delete a volume, or to convert to non-raid.

 

[aford10]

If you hit 'select' on the screen above, what are your options?

 

[Paperdoc]

I don't know of a way to repair / rebuild a RAID0 array when one disk has errors. BUT maybe there is something like that. What you really need is the instruction manual for the RAID system you have. It may be a file on the CD of utilities that came with your system or mobo. If you know the chipset on your mobo (particularly the Southbridge that provides the software RAID management), you may be able to get the manual either from the mobo manufacturer's website or from the chip manufacturer's website. The manual ought to tell you if there is some repair process you can use on a RAID0 array with a detected error.

If there is no such procedure, make VERY sure you have a complete backup that can be restored.

Then your best bet will be to delete the array so that each HDD is now a stand-alone disk. The info on them will be useless. BEFORE you do that, IF your machine can still run, download from the WD website (I see the disks you have say WDC...) their diagnostic package. Get the Data Lifeguard for DOS version, either the CD version here :

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=502&sid=30&lang=en

or the floppy disk version if you have a floppy drive. Follow the instructions to burn your own bootable diagnostic testing disk. IF your machine cannot do this because of its problems, use another machine to get and make your diagnostic disk.

Now you can go ahead and Delete the RAID0 array and start to work on the individual HDD units. You put your diagnostic disk on its drive and boot from it. Completely independent of Windows (you don't have any OS on your HDD now) it will load a mini-DOS into RAM and you can run all its test from menus. You can test one disk unit at a time. If it finds any problem write down what it says, because WD Tech Support will want those details. If it says it can fix the problem, try that - you can't destroy your data any more than it is! One tool that can help if there are a few bad sectors is the Zero Fill process which takes a very long time. It does a thorough test of the drive and can replace malfunctioning sectors with spare good ones.

If you can get both drives to test out trouble-free this way, you can safely re-start your machine and use the RAID Management screens to re-Create your RAID0 array. Then you can use your backup dataset to Restore all of it to the repaired array. On the other hand, if one of those drives had a big problem you cannot fix, you can replace it and then re-Create your RAID0 array and Restore to it.