680i RAID5 Broken?

enigmo

enigmo

enigmo

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3 Jan 2007
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Latest chapter in a long, sorry list of 680i woes...
I've been booting off a single 80GB SATA drive with a 4x500GB RAID5 array for data for a few months now and all was happy, before I decided that an 80GB boot drive was too small. Over the weekend, I unplugged my RAID5 array for safety, removed the 80GB, put in two 160GB drives in a mirrored array, and then plugged back in the 4x500s. The F10 RAID config sees 2x160 mirror and 4x500 RAID5 OK, but in Server 2003, the nVidia storage manager sees the mirror fine, but sees the 4x500 as RAID5 but with a total capacity of only 149.05GB, curously exactly the same capacity as the mirrored array. Windows disk manager sees the RAID5 as a 149.05GB unpartitioned disk.
Any ideas? It's not so much the lack of storage for the time being, I'm confident in saying this is solved by blatting the lot, it's the near-terabyte of data I don't want to lose.
(Before anyone says, I know; where's my backup solution. One is planned but budget is not infinite) :)
 
Did the four disks from the RAID5 array go back into the same ports that they came out of? Are the two arrays named differently in the RAID config?
 
Yep, same ports. I was very careful about that. And different names too. I have tried removing the mirrored array again and reinstalling 2K3 on a single 160GB and still end up with the same problem. On the off chance I did get the ports mixed up, is this kind of capacity error typical of such a mistake?
 
What happens if you go back to your original 80GB install? Maybe something is different between that and the 160GB single drive you tested it with? Sorry to hear about this enigmo :(
 
This is a real odd one - I did have a google and the only really relevant thing I found was on the NVidia forums. Until I realised it was enigmo posting there too :(

So let me get this straight in my own head:

New RAID1 boot array and OS install - RAID5 array seen by the BIOS but not by W2K3?
New W2K3 install to single disk - RAID5 array still showing as a 149Gb?

What's device manager saying to all of this? You should have all the arrays listed under the Disk Drives section, it won't give you much detail but it'll show that there are two independent arrays (or an array and a disk). You have got the latest NVidia chipset drivers (including the IDE driver) installed?
 
Exactly. Whether I boot from the new RAID1 array or a single disk, the RAID5 array is seen as the full 1.36TB in the BIOS and 149GB unpartitioned in Windows. Device manager says it sees a 149GB unpartitoned disk as well as the 149GB formatted boot array. I've reinstalled the latest BFG drivers three or four times now, just to make sure.
 
OK, well, I've tried the array in my desktop machine (identical motherboard, same BIOS as my server had, same settings) in all permutations of the cables, just in case I messed it up royally, and no joy. I guess my last questions before I call it quits and blat the lot is; if I rebuild the array, will I lose all the data anyway? And also, it asks me to pick one specific drive to rebuild at a time, would it matter which I start with seeing as at the moment I have no access to anything?
 
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