Please help stop the insanity! Endless problems going back to RAID!

Thenin · 20 Jun 2018

Hi, folks! I'm on the brink of losing my mind, and I desperately need some very knowledgeable help to avoid losing it.

For several years, my most powerful home-built desktop computer used a two-drive SSD RAID 0 array as my system/boot device. This worked perfectly until last April, when that computer turned itself off and refused to turn back on again. I followed the most likely cause through the least likely, which meant replacing the PSU (which didn't help), then replacing the mobo (which didn't help), then finally being forced to replace the CPU (which was definitely the main root of the problem). But when I put together all the new components, I discovered that one of the two Samsung SSDs that made up the RAID 0 array could no longer be seen by the OS.

AARGH!!! (If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all

)

So I deleted the RAID array and cloned the 64-bit Win 7 Pro system onto a single SSD until that was fixed. Fortunately, the bad drive was still under Samsung's 10-year warranty, so they replaced it. So here I was three days ago, finally with all components working, and the last step was to re-create the RAID 0 array and moving the OS there. And what happened?

ANOTHER FAILURE, that's what!

First, none of the usual bootable disk cloning tools I own would work, not Acronis Disk Director 12, not the latest release of Eassos DiskGenius Pro (formerly Partition Guru, and before that it was call DiskGenius (everything old is new again) , not AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro v7 either. DD 12 started but never got to the main screen (it always just showed an empty screen). DiskGenius Pro refused to perform a sector by sector clone (which of course is mandatory). Partition Assistant would begin a sector by sector clone, but after 6 hours had only reached 1 percent complete.

Desperate, I scoured around and bought EaseUS Todo Backup and -- lo and behold -- it worked great! Hooray!

However, even though I had carefully changed all the necessary registry keys to switch from AHCI to RAID, it would not boot properly. That's when I discovered that the boot partition contained no BCD or even a BCD store!

So I decided to boot into a non-RAID backup system partition, and then I'd use Visual BCD or the like to create a BCD store and set it to the correct values. But that wouldn't boot right either!

It was very, very flaky and wouldn't boot even in Safe Mode correctly, reporting that it had only reluctantly allowed me to log in to a temporary user ID. And from that, of course, nothing would work correctly at all!

This is where I am now. I can't boot correctly into any of my Windows 7 boot partitions, RAID and non-RAID alike!

Please, kind persons, HELP!?

Thanks!

PS: All the System Specs are correct for the system in question

Megahertz07 · 21 Jun 2018

Thenin said:

...But when I put together all the new components, I discovered that one of the two Samsung SSDs that made up the RAID 0 array could no longer be seen by the OS.

By OS or by BIOS?

So I deleted the RAID array and cloned the 64-bit Win 7 Pro system onto a single SSD until that was fixed.

When you delete the Raid 0 array, you loose all data. Can you explain what you did?
- What did you clone (source)?
- How did you clone?

To create a Raid 0 array with two equal disks, the easiest way is on BIOS.
Once created, never change the disk order or change from Raid mode to AHCI mode.
All data on the disks are erased and they are seen by the OS as a single disk.
Then just restore a image or clone a disk to the array.
And cluster by cluster clone isn't mandatory. I would say you should NOT use it.

townsbg · 21 Jun 2018

I wouldn't use raid 0 because if you lose one drive you lose everything. Raid 5 would be better because you can lose a drive without losing everything but you have to have another drive.

As for your drive issue I randomly had drives fail until I discovered that I had a bad PSU and it was frying my drive. You might want to check your PSU.