Solved How to rebuild RAID 5 within W7

[rextrons]

A few days after initial installation, I had a single drive error with my RAID 5 config. I am running three WD 500GB HDs in a RAID 5, with no other internal drives. I verified the questionable drive with slow scans. I used my Intel BIOS to add the drive back into my RAID. So far everything looked great.

But, my BIOS shows all three drives in a good RAID 5 with a status of "Rebuild." There is also a comment on the BIOS screen that "RAID 5 will be rebuilt within the operating system." I looked in W7 for rebuild opportunities, but I did not finding any. So I assumed that the rebuild would be an automatic/background rebuild. I have had my system on for 1 week with no joy. BIOS status still shows "rebuild."

My question is: Am I OK? The Computer Management shows a single healthy partition at full allocation (1,031GB, with "no" Fault Tolerance)? How do you rebuild a RAID 5 with W7?

 

[Golden]

Hi,

I believe there is an option to do this using the DISKPART command (run that from an elevated CMD window). I have never used it, so unfortunately I can't help with the details of the command.



Let us know how you get on with it.

Regards,
Golden

 

[rextrons]

No joy... The "Repair" command is not active in Windows 7 DISKPART. "The command you selected is not available with this version of Windows."

It's a little hard to believe that MS has not figured out how to manage RAIDs yet. Time to move back to LINUX... This time for good.

 

[rextrons]

The fix is in!!! I stumbled on this before giving up:
1. After replacing the bad drive, complete a complete disc scan. This will not show any improvement, but must be done before the next step.
2. Do a full defragmentation for the RAID 5 volume. No short-cuts, it must be a full defrag. This will take a long time, do not stop it. Mine took 44 hours. But, it now works great.

I know this is a big step; doing a defrag on an already damaged RAID 5 takes a lot of faith. If it goes wrong all hope is lost. But mine went fine and everything recovered nicely, all programs and files...

You would think that MS would make this common knowledge...

 

[JimNeelyGA]

Joys Rextrons

I had the same problem as you, one of my RAID 5 drives check out. Simple enough to replace the drive but then stuck with the rebuild status. My system was still running, but very slow. Funny how MS W7 will build a RAID 5 drive automatically but can't rebuild it. When I saw yours took 44 hrs to defrag/rebuild I contacted MS help to see if there was a better solution. NOT! Considered starting over while I was fretting over "what good is a RAID drive if you can't rebuild it." Glad I decided to defrag. Mine only took 24 hours (12 passes). Started out very slow. Wasn't sure it was working. Took 2 hours to get to 1% of the first pass, then about 8 hours on pass 9. When it completed I restarted and everything checked out and speed back to normal.