RAID1 Drive Failure, Replaced, but still not right
phuschnickens
Beverly Hills, Michigan Member
Windows 2003 server with 6 disks setup in RAID1. In the middle of the work-day yesterday it suddenly went down. I looked at the monitor... flashing cursor on black screen.
I rebooted. While booting up the computer displays some info about the RAID volumes and this time it showed a failed drive error or something like that. The failed drive was a member of the boot volume. I decided to replace both drives in the failed array because its always been my understanding that having two identical hard drives is best (and they're small SATA drives so cheap). So i popped in both drives, went to the RAID manager and setup a new volume in RAID1 using the two blank disks. Then, using a separate computer, cloned the original, working drive to one of the blanks that I had just set up in RAID1. After cloning, I popped the new disk back in the server (with it's mate still attached as well). Computer boots, passes the RAID status check but then just gets "Error Loading Operating System". I wasted 2 hours trying to get to recovery console so I could run FIXMBR, then I finally gave up on that and decided to try booting up with all but one boot drive unplugged.
Worked... got into Windows. Upon logging in I get a few errors about corrupt log files (random log files too, like one that is resident to the OS and one that is from a phone monitoring program we have installed). It suggested I run chkdsk and I was nervous so I obeyed. Ran chkdsk /r, rebooted, made sure disk check started and then left for the night.
I came back in this morning and the server was once again stuck at a black screen with blinking cursor. Rebooted and watched for RAID errors. Boot volume was failing (not just one disk but the volume itself) went into the config menu, was prompted to fix error... fixed error... Rebooted. Got into Windows.
I installed a windows based "Intel Matrix Storage Console" so I could get some info. See attached...
Also, no idea why there's suddenly a missing drive????? That should be totally unrelated. Yes, I already made sure it's connected.
Coworkers are here so I can't really work on it until tomorrow but in the meantime I'd LOVE some help. I truly apologize for tldr-ness of this post. I'm not sure exactly what details are most important, so I gave them all.
Thanks in advance!
I rebooted. While booting up the computer displays some info about the RAID volumes and this time it showed a failed drive error or something like that. The failed drive was a member of the boot volume. I decided to replace both drives in the failed array because its always been my understanding that having two identical hard drives is best (and they're small SATA drives so cheap). So i popped in both drives, went to the RAID manager and setup a new volume in RAID1 using the two blank disks. Then, using a separate computer, cloned the original, working drive to one of the blanks that I had just set up in RAID1. After cloning, I popped the new disk back in the server (with it's mate still attached as well). Computer boots, passes the RAID status check but then just gets "Error Loading Operating System". I wasted 2 hours trying to get to recovery console so I could run FIXMBR, then I finally gave up on that and decided to try booting up with all but one boot drive unplugged.
Worked... got into Windows. Upon logging in I get a few errors about corrupt log files (random log files too, like one that is resident to the OS and one that is from a phone monitoring program we have installed). It suggested I run chkdsk and I was nervous so I obeyed. Ran chkdsk /r, rebooted, made sure disk check started and then left for the night.
I came back in this morning and the server was once again stuck at a black screen with blinking cursor. Rebooted and watched for RAID errors. Boot volume was failing (not just one disk but the volume itself) went into the config menu, was prompted to fix error... fixed error... Rebooted. Got into Windows.
I installed a windows based "Intel Matrix Storage Console" so I could get some info. See attached...
Also, no idea why there's suddenly a missing drive????? That should be totally unrelated. Yes, I already made sure it's connected.
Coworkers are here so I can't really work on it until tomorrow but in the meantime I'd LOVE some help. I truly apologize for tldr-ness of this post. I'm not sure exactly what details are most important, so I gave them all.
Thanks in advance!
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Comments
From there I forget the exact steps, but you have to REPLACE the failed disk. You cannot remove the disk without doing this step, nor can you replace it, or the array will be broken.
When you install Windows on a Matrix RAID group, you do NOT have standard SATA layout in the registry. Each RAID group gets a unique UUID which cannot be duplicated. If you change anything other than doing a disk replacement as I described? Windows can't find the drive in the registry, because the UUID has changed, even if the array name it -appears- to key off of has changed.
This seems to indicate that my problems might be solved, no?
Yup, problem is solved. You can rejoin through the Matrix Raid Manager GUI sometimes. It's not 100%. But if you need to do a bare metal restore in the future, be aware of that particular ugly. I don't know any workaround; tried in vain for days on one of my systems (ICH9R.)