Intel Communities: Message List

Re: Rapid Storage Technology only shows one of my two arrays

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:32:02 GMT

shaunc,

It appears that you're running into a naming conflict between the auto-generated array names (Array_0000 and Array_0001) and the name you chose for one of your volumes (Array_0001). To fix yur issue, we will need to rename the *volume* that currently is named Array_0001. That's made more difficult because the volume is not currently showing up in the user interface.

First (and this is optional) I'd recommend renaming your ARRAY0 volume to VOLUME0, just to be clear on what is a volume and what is an array. (With this driver, an array is a collection of disks. An array can contain either one or two volumes. It's a subtle distinction, and for the most part you can ignore it if you want to.)

Second, you'll need to shut down your computer. Right now you have your 715GB disks on ports 0 and 1, and your 954GB disks on ports 3 and 4. Switch this around so that your 715GB disks are on ports 3 and 4 while your 954GB disks are on ports 0 and 1. Doing this will change which array is identified first. When you boot back into Windows, you'll see that VOLUME0 (or ARRAY0 if you didn't rename it) is no longer visible, but your volume named ARRAY_0001 is visible.

Lastly, rename the volume ARRAY_0001 to something else (such as VOLUME_0001). Immediately, the missing array should show up and your problem should be fixed.

Re: Newbie RAID mirror questions

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:14:52 GMT

In answer to your first question: Yes, it is possible to create a RAID1 volume, preserving data from one of the disks used to the create the RAID volume. If the existing disk is your OS disk, this will only work if you system is already in RAID mode. (Windows does not let you change from AHCI or IDE mode into RAID mode without reinstalling your OS).

And for question 2: Yes, if you have four disks, you can create two separate RAID1 volumes.

Re: I have a SERIOUS disaster looming in my face now

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:52:55 GMT

Nighthawke,

I'm sorry to hear about your current situation. If I understand correctly, you started with a RAID1 with two 300GB drives and two other disks in the system: a 540GB drive with valuable data and a 350GB drive with essentially nothing on it. You had intended to migrate the RAID1 to a RAID5 by adding the 350GB drive, but unintentionally selected the 540GB drive. Correct? As soon as you did this two things happened. First, some RAID metadata was written to the end of the disk. Most likely there was none of your data that was overwritten by this operation, but this metadata is used by the driver and OROM to identify the drive as a RAID disk. The next thing that occurred was the RAID driver started migrating the data from a RAID1 configuration to the new RAID5 layout. At this point, critical data at the beginning of the disk started getting overwritten. (i.e. the partition table, followed quickly by data at the beginning of the partition on the disk.) If you hit the power switch quickly, then most of your data is probably still on your disk, but without the "index" to know where everything is. Professional data recovery is definitely the safest option right now. There are also third party tools that might help you get data back (or might potentially make things worse). I don't have any personal experience with data recovery tools. In other forums, one tool I heard recommended is called GetDataBack foir NTFS. I can't vouch for it, but it might be one option for you to look into at this point.

Whatever you do, you do not want to boot into Windows right now, as the migration would continue, and more data would be lost. If you're wanting to attempt your own data recovery, you need to make sure the migration does not continue. The first thing you could do is remove the two original RAID1 disks. At that point if you booted, you'd see a failed RAID5 volume with only your 540GB disk in the array. But this would still be problematic because recovery tools need to look at the disk itself, and they'd probably only see the failed RAID5 volume. Given that you ideally don't want to do any other write operations on the disk until you get your data off, if you move the 540GB disk to a system that is not running the Intel storage driver, then that system will see the disk as a normal disk, and not part of an array. At this point you could run whatever 3rd party tools you want to attempt data recovery. If you do not have access to any system that is not running the Intel storage driver, another option (albeit less desirable) would be to mark the disk as non-RAID in the option ROM. This will clear the metadata from the disk so the RAID software will no longer treat it as part of an array. But this is less desirable because in general when you have a disk that you want to perform data recovery on, you really don't want to write anything to the disk until you've gotten as much data off as possible.

As a disclaimer, I am not a date recovery expert-- my advice may or may not be correct, and could make things worse. There are things I mentioned above that could cause easily cause worse damage. The safest option is find and hire a professional you trust to recover your data for you.

I wish you the best of luck in getting your data back.

Re: Upgrading from Matirx RAID drivers to RST

webadmin@intel.com — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 06:10:59 GMT

Installing RST is an upgrade operation-- you do not need to unstall the Intel Matrix RAID driver first.

Re: Procedures on Upgrading from RAID 1 to RAID 5?

webadmin@intel.com — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:47:49 GMT

I can definitely see where the confusion comes from. The "selected drives" are any additional drives that are being added to the current span. The volume itself will keep its data intact. And any data on your new 350GB drive will be overwritten when that drive is added to the existing RAID array.

Re: Procedures on Upgrading from RAID 1 to RAID 5?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:28:12 GMT

You absolutely can migrate from a RAID 1 to a RAID 5 without loss of data or reinstallation of an operating system using Intel Rapid Storage Technology. Can you tell me what specific warning you're seeing that is causing you concern?

Re: Migrating from RAID 0 to 5 and back again

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:20:38 GMT

With the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, it is not possible to perform a migration that results in fewer disks or results in a smaller volume, so your migration from a 3-disk RAID5 to a 2-disk RAID0 is not supported. However, there may be another, easier, option.

You say that one of the disks on your RAID0 is "on the verge of failing." Does this mean that it is reporting a SMART event, or is marked as Failed in the by the Intel Matrix Storage Manager? (either in the Windows UI or the OROM that shows up right after the BIOS?) If so, then add your new hard disk to your computer and open the Intel Matrix Storage Console in Windows. Right click on the new disk and select "Mark as Spare." The driver will start a "disk replace" operation. When it is completed, your new disk will have replaced your failing disk in the volume.

Re: Storage Console 6.0 w/ LYCeSATA-4e - Lycom 4 Port PCI Express Host Card

webadmin@intel.com — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:00:54 GMT

John,

The Intel Matrix Storage Console can only be used to manage the on-board raid controller on the chipset. It does not support any add-in cards. I would expect the Lycom card you mentioned to have some management application of its own.

--Mike

Re: Does the ICH10R support RAID capacity expansion?

webadmin@intel.com — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:46:40 GMT

The 2TB limit doesn't come from the RAID stack or driver. It's actually a limitation of the way a hard drive's partition table is set up. MBR (Master Boot Record) is a standard way of defining partitions on a disk. It's been around for a long time. It has a limitation that it can only address up to 2TB of disk space. Therefore, MBR can not be used on disks/ volumes that are larger than 2TB.

If the RAID driver did allow an expansion of an MBR volume to greater than 2TB, in the best scenario you would be limited to 2TB of space, but in some scenarios the OS will fail to recognize the volume altogether.

The Intel Matrix Storage Manager does support creating volumes greater than 2TB. Note that not all OROMs support this, but you should still be able to create such a volume in the Windows UI even if it's not supported by the OROM. After creating the volume, you need to use Windows Disk Manager to initialize the disk using GPT (GUID Partition Table) which, unlike MBR, does support more than 2TB volumes.

Something to be aware of, however, is that on many OSs, volumes that have been configured as GPT cannot be used as boot volumes-- you would need to boot of a different disk/ volume.

Re: Does the ICH10R support RAID capacity expansion?

webadmin@intel.com — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 22:37:16 GMT

How large is your RAID5 volume with the 3 disk configuration (how many GB)? Is there more than one volume on the array? If so, what raid level is it?

Thanks,

Mike

Message was edited by: Mike I just re-read your earlier post where you stated you were setting up a single 1TB RAID 5 volume. I would have thought adding a disk in this scenario would have been supported. Perhaps the array free space is the issue here. I'm not sure if the free array space is used up on a capacity expansion. If so, the resulting size of the volume would be greater than 2TB in your case, which would prevent the expansion.