RAID 0 Disaster

DanielMMS · 8 Aug 2012 at 11:05

I'm really hoping that something can be done to avoid the wife removing my testicles with a blunt instrument.

In our main desktop (spec in sig), we have an SSD boot drive then two Samsung HD103SJs in RAID0 for data. I arrived home last night to be told that the PC took an age to load up and Firefox was "missing". A bit of investigation showed that only the SSD was available in Computer, Computer Management etc.. I checked the BIOS and, whilst one HD103SJ is showing, the other is not. I have tried swapping over SATA and power cables but to no avail so it seems that the missing drive has failed. I have had drives fail in the past and there has always been some kind of warning - but not in this case. I have not checked whether the drive is actually spinning or is completely dead, nor have a looked for a burned PCB.

Normally I'm very good at backing up but, you guessed it, due to being ridiculously busy over the last month, it has been forgotten. And of course there is stuff created over the last month that I (or rather my wife) would be more than a little disappointed to lose.

I'm guessing this is a lost cause but is there any hope... or suggestions...?

DanielMMS · 8 Aug 2012 at 12:07

Thanks guys. At least I have a few things to try when I get home!

And, yes, I had been meaning to take the array apart but had just not the time to do it. Typically!

DanielMMS · 6 Sep 2012 at 12:05

Ok so I've now been released from hospital after a failed attempt to re-attach my membra virilia following their ritual removal when my wife heard the happy news...

I have made a little bit of progress, in a clutching at straws kind of way. I identified the faulty HDD and found that it was not powering up at all which made me think it was the PCB that was at fault. I had a third HD103SJ bought at around the same time with a very similar serial number and swapped the PCBs. I placed the faulty HDD in a caddy, turned it on and hey presto it span etc which confirmed that the PCB was at fault.

I then reinstalled the HDD into my PC in exactly the same set up as before it died. The HDD is now found in BIOS but my rather naive hopes that the RAID array would simply leap back into life have been dashed. The HDDs do not appear within My Computer. However, if you go into Disk Management they show as one 2TB (or thereabouts) HDD that needs to be initialised. I have tried Raid Reconstructor but this can only identify a single 2TB HDD - so that was a dead end.

I'm guessing that either the PCB swap hasn't worked properly or I am missing something completely. Any thoughts...?!

DanielMMS · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:19

Thanks for the help guys.

Ironically, doing something ridiculously simple has done the trick. I thought I would have a look at the RAID set up within BIOS. So I entered BIOS, changed the SATA mode from ADCI (or whatever it is) to RAID, re-booted and double checked the RAID set up - all seemed fine. I then re-booted which caused BSOD. So I changed back from RAID to AD whatever, re-booted and amazingly everything is back to normal.

No prizes for guessing what I am doing with a caddy at the moment... Especially since my wife is sat behind me with an exceedingly large pair of scissors...!