RAID 1 problem

[caa]

When buying my new PC, I paid the shop's support service for installing RAID 1 (I am a PC user, not a PC freak). Now, three months later I become aware that RAID 1 was not properly set up and that the second HD is not at all mirroring the main HD, but it sits just functionless in the disk slot.

Is it possible to make a mirror copy of the main HD on the second HD and then to properly install RAID 1 so that I do not have to completely reinstall the PC and recopy all data ?

If so, how do I have to proceed ?

Thanks for any useful advice

caa

[Paul Komski]

You should be able to build or rebuild a mirrored array as long as the second drive is as large or larger than the one you are mirroring. The technicalities differer from PC to PC or from mobo to mobo - so some more exact details about your system would be useful.

There should be settings in the main bios and/or in a secondary bios screen accessed by pressing another specific key during boot up that would need to be configured correctly and the correct selections made to allow this. Some rebuilds have to be done while you wait - others can be done "on the fly" - yet others can be initiated from software running in windows.

You need to read the manual carefully. You could backup your current drive as an image file onto DVDs using BiNG or ImageForDos or Ghost or ... and you would then be able to restore that image, in the event things go awry, to either one HDD or to a blank but newly created RAID-1.

PS How do you KNOW that the second HDD is not mirroring? If the array had been broken for any reason you should get a warning message at each boot up.

[caa]

Hallo Paul,

Thank you for answering. I have a Futjitsu-Siemens ScaleoT PC with a mainboard D2175, the two internal Samsung SAH-SP 2504C SATA-II HDDs are controlled by a Hama SATA card 00049255 (that was built in by the IT support of the shop) for which I could not find any manual on Hama’s website. However, its Silicon Image Sil3112 SATARaid controller has been installed on HDD C: and shows up in the computer administration.

From reading around in the storage-raid-forum.de I believe to have understood that what I have to do, is basically identical with what one would do if one of the two HDDs in a RAID 1 array crashes and has to be replaced:

Thus, first I have to check whether both internal HDDs are jumped on master (or service, if existing) what I will have to verify by opening the PC.

After that, when starting up the PC, I have to enter into the BIOS of the RAID controller (by pressing ctrl- + S in my case) and then I must indicate to it that first boot device at start is SCSI (or CD-Rom) and that I wish to allocate both HDDs to a RAID 1 array. Thereafter I will have to indicate that HDD 1 (designed with C) shall be copied to HDD 0 which is currently showing up in the data storage administration as not allocated and not partitioned (thus my conclusion that the array has not been constructed and the second HDD is not mirroring C: what was confirmed independently by two more expert persons than me that I had asked for advice, is this correct ?).

Do you think my understanding of installing RAID 1 is accurate and that I shall proceed ? (I have saved all my data on an external HDD in case of, and I understand that by making an image of drive C: I can avoid installing everything new from scratch if things go wrong. For this, however, I would have to buy a back-up software (what do you think of Arconis True Image 9 ?)

I await eagerly your comments

caa

[Paul Komski]

Thereafter I will have to indicate that HDD 1 (designed with C) shall be copied to HDD 0
Not exactly. The C drive letter assignment is a Windows thing and relates to a volume. A volume can be a drive or it can be an array. That is to say that once an array has been created it will only appear, to an operating system and it users, as a single drive (with a single drive letter if there is only one partition on the array) even if the array is composed of two, three, four hard drives. You DONT see more than one drive in windows; just one drive and the mirroring should take place seamlessly in the background by the RAID's controllers.

The best way to examining the array itself is to enter the array's bios (ctrl + s you say). In there you should see listed any available drives and be capable of assigning them to various arrays. Mirrors (RAID-1) can only have two hard drives assigned to them and the size of the array will be that of the smaller of the two drives. There are usually other options such as deleting the array (thus separating the relationship of the relevant hard drives) or of forming it or of rebuilding it (for a mirror that is).

Dont change the jumpering of SATA drives. Unlike PATA/IDE drives they are always "masters"; masters which are connected to different channels rather than being master/slaved on one cable going to one slot.

I remain unconvinced that you dont have a functional array since you are not getting any warnings about a broken array and can only see one drive letter in windows. Just check in Disk Management that only "one" hard drive is seen there. That is what should be the case with a functional array.

Acronis True Image has its advocates but I am a lover of BootIt-NG from www.terabyteunlimited.com; not as familiar a GUI as with Acronis but very sound, cheap and gets the job done.

PS You could open the case and disconnect one SATA connector. This would break the existing array so that you would see the warning message I have referred to. As long as you canel the boot-up at this point and power down you can reattach the cable and the mirror should not need to be rebuilt. If you boot to windows with a broken array it will remain broken until it is rebuilt.