RAID partition not showing

[panF]

Hello,

I'm working on a custom built Windows 7 PC (which is not mine and so don't know much about its internals).It was supposed to have a RAID array( I don't know which type RAID), the RAID drive is no longer visible. I assume that at least one of the RAID drives got corrupted. here's a screenshot from 'diskpart' output.

There are six HDD slots in the computer and one of them is a 1TB SSD for the OS, one could be the 4TB HDD and the rest are RAIDs?

I wish to know how to find out the corrupt hard disk ? Shall I've to replace the disk or can repair it, and if so how?

Thanks

 

[panF]

Meanwhile, I switched off the computer and individually taken out each HDD and put it on to USB HD enclosure
and ran "CrystalDiskInfo" to judge the health of the HD, without any formatting and repair.

For two of the drives Drive 1 and Drive 4 I've got problems reported by CrystalDiskInfo:

So how to proceed from here to revive and retrieve the data from RAID? Replace both the faulty HDs?

 

[iko22]

Hello panF

If the computer is using Hardware RAID, then the RAID configuration will be transparent to Windows. You will need to enter the BIOS menu to see the configuration settings and actions available for the storage disks.

Where in BIOS these options reside depends on the motherboard and RAID technology. This is an example BIOS configuration for Gigabyte motherboard, using Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST): RAID not visible in Windows Explorer | Microsoft Answers . The BIOS settings for the storage options will show what RAID is selected.

 

[Megahertz07]

As Iko mentioned, the computer probably has a Raid array set on BIOS.
You should test each disk with Seatools

 

[panF]

Boot Menu

Thank you both for your replies.

I'm a bit new to this and here are the main boot menu and the name of the raid drives(?) which come up while booting.

Are these information any helpful?

 

[iko22]

Thanks for the pictures.

Sorry, I cannot see any reference to disks, or storage controllers (or similar wording) in the first pic.

Second pic is badly cropped, and I cannot properly read the third line. It says the device has initialised 100%, so it seems to be working Okay.

What I can see, is that it is a MegaRAID SAS 9266-4i, which is a Broadcom device. Product details, and a download link for their documentation is at MegaRAID SAS 9266-4i | Broadcom .

I am not familiar with this device, but I can see from the documentation table of contents, that section 4 contains explanation of the device's own command line interface. Read that thoroughly to make sure you don't miss anything, and especially target sections on "locate drives" and "rebuild drives", when you are done.

 

[panF]

Thank you iko22 for the reference to the manuals.
One more question, I'm going to change the faulty disks. Do the new disks need to be exactly same as the old disks, namely, identical brand, identical model number, identical firmware number etc.? or just same sized disks will do?

for example my old damaged disks are of this type:
Robot Check

Can I replace with the same 4TB but newer generation disks like this one?

Robot Check



Thanks

 

[iko22]

So long as the new disk is the same or better than the old one. Otherwise degraded performance may result.

 

[panF]

I've to bump this old thread as I've started working on this again.
Can I hot swap a damaged disk with a new one so that the RAID can repair itself as shown in this video?

Lenovo x3650 M3 with two Failed Drives in RAID 6 - 500 - YouTube

 

[Megahertz07]

The link is for RAID 6. On RAID 6 you need 5 drives.
You need to find out what was the RAID configuration you had.
Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia

Basically you have two kinds of two disks RAID array
- RAID 0 - Data is split ed and goes to half to one drive and half to the other. Doubles the speed and available space. If one drive has problems, you loose all data. Disks has a position on the SATA port. You can't switch disks in the ports. If drive A was configured on port 0 and drive B on port 1, you can't change dreves / ports

- RAID 1 - Data is mirrored in both drives. If one drive has problems, you DON'T loose data.

Normally the RAID configuration is done on a low level, before the OS is loaded. Some computers it is done on BIOS level (Chipset RAID).