Solved Can't Create RAID 1 Mirror Drive on Win7 Pro, 64bit

[Mtnhorse]

I have tried to create a RAID 1 mirror drive on my 64 bit Windows 7 Professional system. I have installed 2 additional Seagate 1Tb drives (ST1000DM003) and when I tried to Add Mirror and selected the other drive it looked like it was working but there were 2 boxes that came up that it was not formatted try later, and also that it couldn't assign the drive letter. When I tried to assign the drive letter, I get an error box with "Virtual Disk Manager" in the title and a message "The system cannot find the file specified". When I search for that I find many references but mostly with external USB drives and none of the resolutions helped. Trying to format gave a different error and failed. I found that in Device Manager under Storage Volumes there is a Generic Volume with the error "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" Both drives show up under Disk Drives with "This device is working properly." Under Disk Management both disks show Dynamic,Online and Healthy and the upper portion shows the Mirror volume. I tried to update the driver on the Generic Volume with the error and it says it is already using the best one. I went back and broke the mirror and used Diskpart to Clean both drives to start over. I created Simple volumes on both, formatted them, assigned a drive letter and was able to store files on them. I then made them both dynamic successfully and could still store and read files on them so I know the drives are good. I also tried to use EaseUS to format it and it sees the mirror volume but none of the actions (format, assign letter, etc) are available. It seems like the root of the problem is the error in Device Manager for the Storage Volume. Any Ideas?

 

[essenbe]

I believe you will have to set your sata controller in BIOS to Raid (which may keep your OS from booting unless it was installed that way) and on boot up you should see a raid screen. Hold down the Control Key and press I to enter the raid set up. set the drives up there and it should work. Make sure they are on the same controller.

I should mention that raid may cause you more problems than it is worth, and if you are doing it as a backup, Raid is not a backup and will not serve as one. You will also take a performance hit with raid 1 too.

 

[AddRAM]

What is the purpose of the Raid setup ?

Are the disks just going to be used for storage ?

 

[Mtnhorse]

I want to set them up as software raid vs hardware and not for the OS. It will be used as data storage for other family systems to back up to and I would do backups of it. I wanted to get the hardware redundancy of the mirror in between backups.

Thanks
Gary

 

[Mtnhorse]

I have decided to give up on the RAID idea and create 2 simple volumes since the general feeling about RAID 1 on a workstation isn't very positive. I will still use one of the drives to backup other family systems to periodically through my home network and manually replicate that to the other drive. And to make sure it isn't compromised by a virus I will take it offline. Does anyone see a problem with that strategy?

Again I will be backing the data up to an external drive from time to time to have another copy in case the system turned to ashes.

Thanks!
Gary