I have a Windows 7 64bit computer which uses a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD motherboard. I use the built-in Intel Raid chip on the motherboard to have a raid 1 array for my system volume and also a second raid 1 array for my data.
The System volume Raid 1 array had one disk fail and the array went to status 'failed'. I replaced the faulty disk and went into the Intel Matrix Storage Manager but unfortunately I could get any option to allow me to rebuild (The manual says that an option to rebuild should appear). The status of the array remained at 'failed'.
I am thus unable to boot my computer into Windows and am now looking at other methods to recover the situation. I would like to find some method to recover the situation without loading having windows from scratch. Because I thought that the Raid 1 array was fairly secure, I had never got round to taking an image copy of it.
I have a number of questions and I would appeciate it if someone could answer some or all of them for me.
1. Why, when I had a disk failure did the raid 1 array not continue working in a degraded state with the second disk - Note that I previously had a computer crash and subsequently the array went through the recovery process after rebooting. At the point when it competed this recovery process the disk 0 was marked faulty (I was watching the Intel Matrix Storage Console at the time). A few seconds later the computer crashed because Windows could no longer access the drive.
2. Do you actually lose the data from the disks if you delete a Raid 1 array? I do not see why you should as each disk contains all the data. If not, would it them be possible to boot from one of them.
3. What would happen if I put two new disks into the computer and then deleted the array and then took them back out and put the good disk from the Raid system back in to the first SATA port, would it be possible to boot the computer from it?
4. Another alternative would be to put two new disks in and then delete and recreate the array. It should then be possible to use some recovery software to copy all the files off the good disk from my current raid 1 setup and then transfer them to the new blank raid disks. Would this work and if so have you any suggestions about suitable software?
Does anyone have any other suggestions about being able to create a bootable disk from from my current good raid disk?
Please bear in mind that what ever I do, I do not want to affect my second Raid 1 array which I use for data.
One final question - after I have recovered from this situation would it be possible instead of having two raid 1 arrays, to have a Master and Recovery disk for my System volume and a Raid 1 array for my data on the same Intel Raid controller?
Thanks
Timothy Edwards
